Ready to serve

These days, nothing could be further from the truth; butchers can have almost anything they want in terms of a serve-over – not only in colour, but also size, shape, style, materials, lighting, refrigeration units and accessories.     

While modern serve-overs may be ‘cool’, butchers should not ignore their ‘hot’ serve-over counterparts as these can make a big difference to a butcher’s profit margins. The introduction of a range of new materials that keep serve-overs looking new and clean longer, and new fittings that are smaller, more efficient and create more space, means that modern counters are slimmer, more shapely, colourful, attractive and interesting than their predecessors.

Combined with the availability of new materials and technologies, the use of computer design technology has unlocked the imagination of shop designers, allowing them to create a fluidity of movement that encourages customers to cast their eye along a display, and to walk the shop. Modern serve-overs are simply more inviting to approach and offer a better view of products when standing near them.

While choice is almost unlimited at the top end of the market — and it is true that there is something on the market to suit every butcher’s pocket — it does not mean that the established brand leaders in the serve-over sector, both distributors and manufacturers, have had an easy time of it over the past few years. The recession has taken its toll and cheaper manufacturers from Eastern Europe have moved in.
Nevertheless for the butcher intent on good quality, undertaking a shop refit or simply choosing a new serve-over counter can mean that the sky is the limit when it comes to choosing products that are long-lasting, energy-efficient, highly practical and pleasing on the eye.

Phoenix Retail Services has been supplying top-end Smeva serve-overs to butchers for a number of years and the brand has been a favourite with supermarket group Waitrose for many years. Based in High Wycombe, with its engineering division in Swindon, Phoenix has witnessed the evolution of the serve-over during the last decade. Sales manager Ben Hatton says: “Every Smeva model is bespoke. The basic carcase is predefined, with the same deck, front and back, but in terms of the angle you want on a cranked case you can have any angle, any length of cabinet, any surface finish, such as granite, or any lighting system.”

A growing trend is the use of black stainless steel, says Hatton. “It’s an expensive product, but the steel is actually dyed black, rather than painted black, so it’s black all the way through and has better scratch-resistance.”

Special polymer paints are also now available for the rear of cabinets. “It’s incredibly durable, much more durable than a standard, powder-coated finish.”

Another trend is self-cleaning glass, a system originally developed by Pilkington. “It has a coating that makes it incredibly ‘slippy’ and stops any marks forming on it. It’s only available on flat or ‘boxed’ glass, not on curved glass, but flat glass cabinets are all the trend at the moment anyway. There are seven or eight different glass ranges available, so there’s something for everyone.”

Hatton says that, since the formation of Phoenix in 2000, the company has been moving in a green direction, particularly in the development and use of environmentally friendly refrigerant gases for serve-over cabinets. Cabinets used to run on a synthetic, manufactured refrigerant gas, R404A, with the unit running off a big pack on the roof or in the shop, but the direction now is for service counters to run off a hydrocarbon refrigerant that has no environmental impact because it is a natural product.
Cabinets have a ‘piped’ deck. The whole base of the cabinet is sealed with a stainless steel sheet and, underneath the sheet, there is a copper pipe that refrigerates the deck plate itself. Known as conductive refrigeration, this set-up transfers the cold directly from the plate to the product itself. “In addition to that, there is a coil at the back of the cabinet and, on top of it, very low-speed fan motors that waft the air over the product,” says Hatton, “The reason for that is two-fold: first, obviously, it gives fantastic product temperature because there are two refrigeration systems working; and, secondly, because the air speed is so low and the majority of the refrigeration comes from the conduction system there is very little dehydration of the product.”

Dehumidification systems can be easily spotted in serve-overs, because the fine atomised mist emitted looks like smoke. Hatton says “A lot of butchers are quite nervous about dehumidification systems, because they think they have environmental or health issues with vapourising water being put onto a product, but the system is ultrasonic, which breaks down the cell walls of any pathogens within the water and it’s all filtered with a reverse osmosis system before it even gets on to the product.”

On a standard refrigeration system that doesn’t have a deck coil, there would probably be a 5% weight loss over a 24-hour period, but the Smeva is guaranteed to reduce that to 0.7%, Hatton says. “We factor in the weight loss saved on the product based on the number of kilos that a butcher might sell in a week and the price charged per kilo. We make a money-saved-on-return-on-investment calculation, In addition, we factor into the return-on-investment night covers, which cover the product, and the time it would take to de-merchandise and re-merchandise the product every day. The payback on a unit with the savings made from less weight loss and less preparation time is therefore between 18 months and three years, depending on the level of specification of the unit itself.”

The increasing level of sophistication and innovation comes at a price, however, and it has been a tough couple of years for leading brands and established serve-over suppliers and manufacturers with many cheaper imports coming in from Eastern Europe, Greece and Turkey. “The trend is moving back to Western Europe now because of the emphasis on energy-saving, where the traditional manufacturers have a lead at the moment,” claims Hatton. “That seems to be winning back a lot of the customer base. Some larger retailers have gone for cheaper options in the past couple of years and I think it’s fair to say that some have had their fingers burnt.”

SRDS Consultants, based in Cheshire, closed its manufacturing arm because of competition from cheaper units coming in from abroad, although it can still supply British manufactured products. Director John Smith says buyers of cheaper counters from Eastern Europe should check out the warranty and back-up service available with any unit that is purchased.

Smith says that a lot of butchers still like stainless steel. It is also popular with some to put the butcher’s block in the middle of the counter so that the butcher himself can stand facing the customer while preparing meat. “Another trend is to have meat joints and carcases hanging in a refrigerated cabinet behind the serve-over. A spray-painted black background to the cabinet really sets off the meat very well. Some have an air curtain down the front or even glass-fronted doors.”

It is ironic that, given the variation of shape that counters can now be designed to, a recent trend has been the popularity of serve-overs using flat glass fronts and counter tops. Shop designer Mary Irving, of Bournemouth-based Creative Retail Solutions (CRS), says: “The idea of vertical upright glass has been around for a year or so and, on the Continent, about 80% of their bespoke counters are in that style, but in the UK it’s relatively fresh to the market.”

The merits of straight versus curved glass on a serve-over are hotly debated. Some say there is no difference in customer perception. Others say the curved glass means that a top shelf is further away from the viewer, so there is a wider, uninterrupted view of the product. Irving says: “It depends to a certain extent on the size of the shop and how customers approach the cabinet. In bigger shops, if the customer is standing back from a flat glass cabinet, they get a good view of all the products. It’s personal taste and styling but it’s another option. The options used to be more limited.”

Butchers are getting more adventurous in redesigning their shops, says Irving. Nowadays, designs can reflect their own tastes and be much more individual. “A lot of shops are looking a lot less like butchers’ shops than they used to, reflecting personal taste and style. There is a lot more diversity and less standardisation. Our most popular cabinet colours are black, which always looks powerful, and blue. Pale blue is very unusual on a cabinet, but very effective. It looks beautiful.”

Cabinet corners used to be awkward areas, but even here there have been developments. Irving says the Ebony D counter that it supplies has corners that are curved with vertical uprights, which make for greater elegance and visual difference. “Also new is the fact that the corner glass can be raised,” says Irving. “Before, it was a case of unscrewing the glass, but now they have a very clever, hinged arrangement that, very skillfully, allows the butcher to open it easily.”

Irving agrees that refrigeration units are better now. She uses an analogy from car manufacturing to explain. “A car used to do 25 miles to the gallon and now we would regard that as appalling. Modern cars can do 45 miles to the gallon. Like car engines, refrigeration systems are much more efficient today and much more compact, but just as efficient. We also have temperature probes in the front and back of the display deck and the extra chilled air is only added when it is actually needed, which makes it much more efficient than pumping out air all the time and drying out the meat.”

Jenny Bedell-Harper, a director of Yorkshire-based InHaus Solutions, says some sectors of the butchery trade have had a tough time in recent years. “However, in our experience, the top end of the trade is still growing – people want quality rather than quantity.”

Size matters when it comes to available space, she says. “The advantage of a new serve-over compared with one that is about 20-25 years old is that it is likely to be slimmer in design, therefore giving more space to the customer side where it is so often desperately needed,” she says. “On average, new counters are about 200mm slimmer, usually without a bag rack, so some shops gain well over 400mm for the full length of the counter.”

She agrees with Hatton that Smeva serve-overs have a multitude of features, including the misting of the meat which is ‘proven’ to retain the moisture and reduce weight loss. “It doesn’t come cheaply though, and is a feature which, if the product is passing through the counter quickly enough, has little influence on the weight. There is no denying that they are a very smart-looking counter. So it’s up to the client to decide if the price tag is worthwhile.”

When it comes to shop design, the counter layout is one of the items at the top of the list, she says. “The position can be critical to a layout. Working out the ergonomics, to allow both staff and customers to flow easily within a shop unit, can sometimes make or break a design.”

She cites Crawshaw Butchers in Grimsby. ”We designed a horseshoe-shaped counter. The unit was long and shallow, which is unusual for a retail unit, so the solution was unusual too. It quite simply transformed the layout and the customer flow.”

Trends come and go. “Like everything else the ‘design’ has to be updated by the manufacturer to keep the customers wanting to change and be up to date,” she says. “The glass has gone from straight, to sloped, to curved, from full to half-full, and back to straight. At the end of the day, it’s all about personal choice and the correct aesthetic for the individual shop. No one style is ever ‘correct’ for everyone, just like anything else you buy.”

Earlier this year, InHaus designed and built the flagship 4,000sq ft store for Crawshaw Butchers in the Westfield centre in Derby. “It comprises not only a butcher’s shop but also a 50-seater café. Interestingly, there is no fresh meat serve-over, although customers can still ask for a butcher to prepare a certain cut, should they require it. Instead the shop uses a large run of multi-decks for the fresh meat and only uses the ‘serve-over’ function for hot and cooked products.”

Bedell-Harper says the hot counter is the saviour of the butchery industry. “It’s the key for most shops to develop for the future, and, especially in this economic climate, it’s the key to making profit. It depends on the location of the shop, but the hot counter can become either simply a holding counter for pies and pastries or, in a busier location, it can provide an invaluable asset serving carvery sandwiches, cooked chickens, ribs, cooked joints, sausages and so on.

The hot counter attracts a different customer – busier, younger, often less able to cook, and often just simply hungry. But, given time, the hot counter customer can also become a fresh meat customer, entering a world they may otherwise never have discovered.

Kurran Gadhvi, marketing manager for Essex-based Valera, says counter runs can include flat chilled displays, refrigerated wells, heated sections, ambient sections with glass fronts for rear service or flat topped for tills, scales and so on, all built into a unit with a single design and colour. “With a new installation, consideration of what is going to go behind the counter — shelves, cupboards, and so on — will dictate the space needed and may mean that the serve-over has to be positioned further forward. For this reason, a site survey should be arranged with the potential supplier. Don’t limit your thinking to a straight run. Corners, both internal and external, can make a useful ‘L’ shape to maximise the selling space, and a variety of glass styles are available to match.

“In terms of current trends, there seems to have been an increase in demand for units with straight glass, like our Delice range. As far as I can tell, there are two reasons for this. Firstly, it is part of a general return to ‘retro’ fashion of the 1970s and ’80s, when virtually everybody had straight glass. Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, straight glass is a lot cheaper than curved glass and so this appeals to any retailer on a tight budget, as most of them are in the current economic climate.”

While some establishments still like the traditional wooden appearance, more businesses are choosing different colour schemes. “Don’t be afraid — the traditional mid-blue or mid-red is being replaced with white, bright red, purple, black, and high gloss finishes. All colours are now possible. Make a statement about your business, make the site stand out,” he says.

Scottish equipment and refrigeration supplier Watco says different designs and configurations may be needed, depending on a shop’s location. While the main concerns of a shop in a rural or residential area may be to keep presentation fresh, in busier areas, it may be speed of service.

Watco marketeer Chris Mason says: “If you are trading in a busy high street or shopping centre, you have got competition for the way you look, but also a high level of walk-past and time-pressured customers. You need to make sure you are managing your customer flow from entrance, product selection, through scanning products, service payment and out of the door, so there is no bottleneck. A self-selection centre may work better, because people will baulk at a queue because they think ‘I’m just not going to get served in my lunch hour’.” Watco are agents for Eurocryor.

Printer friendly version

Email this article to a friend

Bookmark this

---