Serving the South West with a new state-of-the-art Development Bakery Kitchen for The FoodWorksSW.

  • New bakery development kitchen serving local businesses, food and drink manufacturers, entrepreneurs and start ups
  • Flexible short term space with mobile state of the art bakery equipment

Brief

The FoodWorksSW operated by The Food And Drink Forum for North Somerset Council is a newly opened purpose-built food and drink technical innovation centre, located in Weston Super Mare. This exciting initiative will provide 5 development kitchen spaces and 12 food-grade business units for local food and drink businesses, start-ups and entrepreneurs, looking to develop their business and menu offer.
With the new spaces officially launched in October 2020, a competitive tender was released for the design, build and fit-out of the bakery specialist development kitchen. The team at ifse were successful in winning the design and build contract for the first bakery kitchen by proposing a fully flexible space that could cater for different production lines.

Result

Assuming total responsibility for the design, building works, equipment supply and installation the ifse team were delighted to be involved in this ground-breaking project. The team focused the design around a large flexible central island kitchen that made use of zones for different types of cooking and baking The open set up would foster collaborative engagement, with clear lines of sight to all team members. Mobile equipment could be relocated to suit the specific production line as required.

The flow therefore started at the entrance, with raw ingredient storage and straight into the prep area with all equipment required to create pastry, dough and cake mixes.

With the heavy equipment located around the perimeter, the design allowed a large open workspace in the centre, including a marble top section for preparing by hand.
A self-venting Bakertop UNOX combination oven was utilised for fresh and frozen bakery, pastry and confectionery cooking, positioned over a high-efficiency Electrolux blast chiller.

With a maximum temperature of 450c, the Polin double deck oven was specified to provide precision control in the baking process as well as a proover with humidity control kit below the oven.

For specialist production lines, a tabletop tempering machine, vibrating table, sauce warmer, bun divider (moulder) and tabletop depositor were included in the facility.

Anne Peacock, Associate Director at ifse who spearheaded the project said:

“The FoodWorksSW is a fantastic concept for businesses in the South West, looking to develop their menu or their offer.
The development kitchen that our team have designed will provide the opportunity for entrepreneurs to introduce new products to market utilising state-of-the -art equipment along the way. It’s been a pleasure to work with the onsite team, Zoe and Simon have been fantastic and we look forward to working with The FoodWorksSW in the future.”

Zoe Plant, New Product Development and Innovation Manager at The FoodWorksSW said:

“Our new purpose-built, food-grade Bakery is ideal for start-up and small businesses who don’t have space for any development work or who want to trail and scale-up their production.
The pilot Bakery facility will also be invaluable for large-scale companies requiring space for new product research and development and to trial new products. It’s an ideal solution for companies wanting to innovate and carry out R&D without having to break their current production lines.

Overall, we have been really pleased with the smooth way ifse have managed the project and installation of the equipment for the development room to be open on time”

Website – The Food And Drink Forum

Website – The FoodWorksSW

News – BristolLive – £11 million regional food innovation centre open for business 

Website – Multi-million pound development to create 250 jobs