Foodcraft has six full-time Computer Aided Design
stations dedicated to providing kitchen drawings, layout, design and engineering
specs to customers.
"Providing these design and drawing capibilities is
extremely important," said Harry Gallins, President. "It saves our end-users the
fees they would be paying an architect or consultant." When the design details
have been ironed out, the plans are sent over to Foodcraft's in-house fabrication
shop. Stainless steel for counters and other surfaces are built to spec, ensuring
high quality results as well as on-time production.
Then the equipment
is loaded onto Foodcraft's own tractor trailer trucks and delivered to the client's
site where it is installed by some of the firm's 13 full-time installers.
"Our
real strength is in project management at the job site level. "We can get the
whole package on our trucks to the site with our people. Then, we coordinate with
the general contractor at the job site."
Often TriMark Foodcraft will help
a customer through the process from start to finish. "We like it when someone
comes to us and they already have a space for their restaurant location," Harry
Gallins said. "We sit down and do preliminary design drawings with them for the
front and back of the house. That whole process usually takes three to five weeks.
We'll provide three quotes: one for front-of-house furniture, another for kitchen
equipment, and a third for smallwares and table top items.
"Then we stage
the equipment here while they're under construction, which may take 90 days. We
bring the equipment in early to make sure that there's no damage. When the restaurant
is ready, we load it on our own trucks, our own personnel install it and make
it ready for the local trades. When the dining room is ready, we bring in the
furniture and set it in place. We do the punch list items, minor corrections required
by local health officials or managers. Then, just before training starts we bring
in the smallwares, unbox them, and help set them up.
Prepared
for the Unexpected
In the food industry, crisis and the unusual are often
the norm. Restaurants often operate on thin margins, and don't have a lot of advance
planning time, or simply can't afford to be down. For TriMark Foodcraft, these
situations are common. For instance, a call will come in from a high profile customer
saying, "We need a new kettle in Ontario, Canada -- tomorrow!" and we will put
a team right on it said Harry Gallins. Or the firm will get an order for 30 ice
machines in a Stadium project which needs to be onsite as soon as possible. Or
they'll have to bring in a crane and go through the window to get counters into
the third story cafeteria of a life insurance company.
