Water, your best friend...Mmmmm

As most people know, but don’t always take the time to think about it, water is by far the main ingredient used in the Catering sector. Whether it’s to produce steam in ovens, drinks from a boiler or coffee machine through to ice to cool our drinks, water is ever present in the equipment used and offers great benefits but also contains a number of dangers lurking within. At Advantage Catering Equipment Ltd we actively seek out to offer solutions that deal with these negative factors head on.

Over 60% of UK water supplies are now in hard water areas, with this number ever increasing as suppliers look to new water sources to keep up with the ever growing demand. In these areas enemy number 1 attacks with a vengeance and the hardness leaves limescale deposits inside of all types of equipment blocking valves, increasing energy consumption, and very often leading to total equipment failure- i.e a total halt of any revenue related to that equipment. If left unattended scale deposits can be very expensive and are a fact of life that simply has to be dealt with to halt its destructive nature.

Further to this 100% of UK mains water supplies contain Chlorine, which has been added to allow the sanitary transport of the water over long distances. Whilst this Chlorine is dosed at what are deemed to be save levels for drinking purposes there are still long term health effects that are associated with its consumption. Beyond that if you’re making any form of beverage then the Chlorine in the water supply will add a taste to this beverage and once removed this greatly improves the overall beverage quality giving a much fresher taste that can make the difference to repeat business.

Through our close relationship with water treatment suppliers Aqua Cure Ltd we’re able to offer tailored solutions that cover all types of water supplies and protect the equipment that you’ve invested to, and the revenue it generates for your business.

For instance the Everpure Claris filter severely reduces the amount of limescale in the water which protects your ovens, coffee machines, boilers etc from costly limescale build up. Furthermore, unlike most filters of this type, Everpure Claris also filters 100% of the water for Chlorine reduction to ensure best taste improvement. With its variable bypass, built in flush valve and variable water bypass we’ve found that the Everpure Claris is highly efficient at reducing the costs associated with scale build up.

What’s that I hear?......You’re one of the lucky 40% that has a soft water supply? Never fear at Advantage Catering Equipment Ltd we haven’t overlooked the fact you still have Chlorine in the water and the effects this has on the drinks and food produced by your equipment. Within our Everpure range we have various solutions that will reduce the Chlorine and have options with/ without soft water scale control that will suit any budget.

So you’ve filtered the water to your drinks machines, ovens , Ice Machines etc but what about other areas of the premises?

One thing we’ve always found interesting is that people purify the water coming out of drinking taps etc but then fill the glass with ice from a machine that has no filtration fitted. Therefore all the impurities you’ve paid to take out of the drinking water have just been put back in via the ice cubes. Further to this you may be finding that your ice is quite brittle or dissolves too quickly, again this boils down to (or freezes down to) the impurities in the water getting in the way of the water molecules.

Again, we have solutions for this that can offer varying levels of filtration across all the different sizes of ice machine in the market and one call could get you on your way to resolving this.

Staying with ice machines, do you have a sanitisation cycle in place for your ice storage area? It’s a little known fact that the cause of most stomach upsets that we suffer after an evening out are generally caused by poor ice hygiene in our drinks and are not related to the food preparation and handling. As such, if you don’t enforce good hygiene practices with your ice storage you are effectively negating all the hard work carried out in the kitchen and bar because your customers could still suffer the morning after and will usually relate this to “something they ate the night before”. Protect your reputation and use our Aqua Dosa sanitiser range, we offer kits, sprays, wipes and more that, effectively used as part of other good hygiene practices, will help maintain a clean bacteria free environment.