Since 2001, Aspen Services has been supplying commercial kitchens with premium kitchen equipment from the biggest names in the global culinary trade. Staffed by a professional team with extensive experience from across the hospitality industry, Aspen Services proudly offers service that is rooted in a genuine understanding of the client’s needs. Richard Hagan spoke with Sales Director Richard Brooks.
Located conveniently just off the M5 in Bridgewater, Somerset, Aspen Services’ headquarters is ready to welcome clients and vendors. The Aspen Business Centre boasts ample space for Aspen’s fast-growing staff complement, plus a fully-equipped logistics centre to ensure customer deliveries are executed on time, every time.
Perhaps the biggest highlight at the Aspen Business Centre is its state-of-the-art demonstration kitchen that will open spring 2027. This high-tech new facility will feature the industry’s latest and best commercial kitchen equipment from Aspen Services’ portfolio of top suppliers around the world. When completed, it will become a demonstration facility, as well as an events and training hub for both Aspen Services and its supply and manufacturer parters.
This new facility is a fitting crown for a company that, for almost three decades, has consistently demonstrated its ability to meet and exceed the expectations and requirements of some of the hospitality industry’s most demanding establishments.
But according to Sales Director Richard Brooks, it is all in a day’s work for the Aspen Services team and its uniquely personal insight into their clients’ needs: “85 per cent of our team has served many years in the hospitality industry. We know how difficult the hospitality industry can be, because we have been there ourselves. So, when we speak with clients, we are not reading from a script. It makes us quite approachable and genuine.”
Aspen Services designs and installs world-class commercial kitchens across the UK. Altogether, it boasts a staff complement of 34 people in total, spread across various departments. This includes a team of fourteen engineers based permanently on the road, ensuring clients receive fast and professional service at all times.
The company’s staff retention is also impressive, with the average length of service sitting at almost 10 years.
Aspen Services is a member of ENSE, a specialised buying group specifically for companies in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods industry. “Our partnership with ENSE effectively gives us £860 million worth of buying power annually, ensuring that we obtain better terms and ultimately allowing us to deliver superior customer service,” said Mr Brooks.
Powerful projects
In its 25 years of operation, Aspen Services has installed kitchens in a bewildering number of locations, ranging from high-end restaurants to commercial canteens, each one bringing its own unique set of requirements and challenges, but all of them reliably delivering dishes every single day from equipment that never skips a beat.
A particular highlight in the company’s project portfolio is Hinkley Point nuclear power station on the Somerset coast in England. Here, Aspen Services installed and now maintains a kitchen that feeds a staggering 16,500 people per day – including visitors, staff, contractors and others.
But servicing a nuclear power station site is not exactly straightforward. “We have the service and maintenance contract for that site because we are nuclear trained for health and safety,” said Mr Brooks. “Other companies often quote on the same contract but end up bailing out because the costs associated with the nuclear safety accreditation are too onerous.”
Meanwhile, Mr Brooks highlighted Winslade Manor, located just outside Exeter, in Devon, as his personal favourite project. Winslade Manor is a beautifully restored early 19th-century Grade II listed Georgian manor house. Aspen Services was deeply involved in the restoration project.
“They wanted everything to look amazing and modern, with a hyper-efficient all-electric kitchen,” Mr Brooks said. “In the space of only three weeks, we installed some of the most wonderful, premium, energy-efficient equipment you have ever seen. It includes a white stone servery counter, and a bar with integrated mood lighting. To top it all off, we did all of this during lockdown, so the rules on site were a nightmare!”
A global supply chain
Aspen Services credits a great deal of its success to the relationships it has built with a network of trusted suppliers around the world. The company has enjoyed an especially long-term relationship with Rational AG, a German manufacturer of commercial combi-steamers and multifunctional cooking pans.
“Rational AG is the leader in kitchen footprint management, speed, energy efficiency and sustainability: efficiency is the whole ethos,” said Mr Brooks. “Our partnership with Rational AG is huge for us. Most of our demo kitchen facilities are built around this equipment, and it has been that way for about twelve years.”
True Refrigeration – a leading family-owned American company that designs and builds commercial refrigeration equipment – is another supplier that Aspen Services works closely with. “True Refrigeration is our most recent, properly invested supply partner,” Mr Brooks continued. “Its credentials are impeccable and the logistics are exquisite; orders always arrive on time with no problems.
“True Refrigeration also offers a seven-year warranty in the UK, which is one of the best in the industry. Being able to offer that to our clients, with all of the world-class support we receive from True, makes it a no-brainer for clients, but it also positively benefits our reputation in the industry. Aspen Services is therefore proud to be one of True Refrigeration’s largest customers in the UK.”
Finally, Mr Brooks spotlighted Meiko, also based in Germany. Meiko is a prominent manufacturer specialising in professional commercial warewashing, cleaning and disinfection equipment.
“Meiko is the absolute experts in regard to energy efficiency and water reclamation,” said Mr Brooks. “Its equipment has excellent heat recovery properties, meaning that in many cases, you don’t have to install extraction systems, which can reduce running costs by as much as 34 per cent.”
Passion for hospitality
In closing, Mr Brooks revealed his passion for the hospitality industry and how this energises his own love for the work he does for Aspen Services’ clients: “I started in the hospitality industry at fifteen years old and have never left – I’ve just changed seats. The amount of passion in this industry is so inspiring to me; whether it is a passionate chef who loves his food, or a setting that is stressed because their existing operation isn’t working as well as it could.
“There is no better feeling than just listening to these clients tell us about everything they want to achieve while knowing that between me, my team and my manufacturing partners, we can easily achieve whatever the client wants, usually within budget.
“Our team, our combined expertise and my excitement for the industry is the reason I get up at 5am every day and often work all the way through to 7pm. I don’t believe there is any industry quite like it.”