Opening in 1885, The Oaks Hotel has come to be regarded as one of Sydney’s most iconic hotels. Situated in Neutral Bay, NSW, just 10 minutes north of the Harbour Bridge, the Oaks has been a favourite meeting place for locals and tourists for many years.

The Oaks first found the need to upgrade their kitchen after the health inspector identified a small area of concern in the main kitchen cool room. The existing steel shelving was showing the beginnings of rust and the health inspector recommended giving the shelving a good scrubbing and treating the affected area carefully. The owner, however, demanded the best from his overall kitchen operations and the decision was made to replace the shelving entirely.

According to Catering Manager Denise Ronson, contacting a dealer with knowledge in this field was their first point of call.

“We consulted with Guy Churcher, Business Development Manager at Bunzl Catering Supplies,” said Denise. “We needed to find a shelving system that would not rust, first of all, but also provided good value for money. By replacing the shelving from scratch we used this opportunity to completely redesign the shelving layout to provide us with more space and a better layout. Guy recommended Cambro’s Camshelving Elements shelving [however] a number of options were considered – from traditional stainless steel, which was expensive to coated shelving and others. Cambro’s Elements shelving was found to be the best value for money shelving that we could find in the market.”

The results have been better than the team ever could imagine.

“The shelving has significantly increased the space in our cool room. The shelving improves the efficiency and the organisation of the cool room and provides us with a system to make sure that products are not stored on the floor. According to our Head Chef, the best thing about the shelving is that it is easy to clean. With our old wire shelving it was always a huge task to remove the shelving and then scrub it down so that it would be food safety compliant. Now it is so easy, we simply remove the shelf plates to wash them. The (composite) material of the posts and shelves makes it easy to wipe clean with a cloth.”