Planning a new school canteen/tuckshop kitchen with Hillbrook College
Hillbrook Anglican College is a co-educational high school in leafy Enoggera, Brisbane. Their new canteen kitchen design is around the concept of a café. A meeting place for the students and an area for events. The tuckshop caters for 400 to 800 students and staff daily, serving nutritious, sustainable food. We caught up with Chef Trevor Winch to discuss how the team at Hillbrook are serving up delicious, nutritious meals.
A canteen/tuckshop kitchen design that delivers healthy, delicious food
When designing the tuckshop, the school wanted a meeting place for the students that could also cater for events. The tuckshop is cashless, with students using a prepaid card to speed up service.
Trevor and his team start at seven in the morning, baking flaky ham and cheese croissants and warm herb focaccia for the breakfast crowd. When the bell rings, they start prepping for morning tea, followed by lunch. They also sell dinners-to-go for families, a new initiative brought on by Covid.
Hillbrook College installed a ten tray RATIONAL iCombi oven and a RATIONAL iVario. With Trevor the only chef and a roster of volunteer parents helping out, it’s essential that the equipment is safe and easy for anyone to operate. RATIONAL equipment is also multifunctional and saving space. Recipes can easily be preprogramed into the unit, ensuring consistency is maintained regardless of which parent volunteer is on duty.
“The RATIONAL equipment has opened avenues for us. We produce foods that weren’t traditionally produced in tuckshops.”
“My Friday special currently is fried rice. I don’t have a wok. But, I can crank the iVario up to 250 degrees and do fried rice through there. I can’t sell enough of it,” says Trevor.
The iCombi oven can be set to have food ready for recess or lunch. The unit cleans itself overnight, ready for a new day.
The iCombi oven sensors the size, quantity and condition of the food. It then automatically adjusts the temperature, cooking chamber climate, air speed and cooking time.
“You can steam, roast chicken and reconstitute food. The versatility is unbelievable.”
The food is cooked perfectly in the shortest possible time using the least amount of energy. Different meals can be loaded into the iCombi together and cooked independently.
“It adjusts temperature along the way if it needs to. You can put your recipes in there, and your end product comes out as it should every time. A big one for me, was to poach eggs in an oven.”
Grill, poach, bake or pan fry at the same time. You can perfectly grill chicken, bake croissants and poach salmon.
The other RATIONAL unit Trevor relies on is the iVario. This space saving, multifunctional unit deep fries, boils and pan fries all in one.
“You’ve got two pieces of equipment within one. You can be boiling pasta in one and make the pasta sauce in the other. You’ve got a meal for 50 people in a matter of 20 to 25 minutes.”
If your school tuckshop/canteen kitchen needs a new fit out, speak to Comcater. We can help you work more efficiently, saving time and money.
Call us on 1300 309 262 or fill out the form for more information.