Today I had the privilege to have been able to facilitate a tour for renewoned journalsit from Economist magazine, in the recently commissioned K3 facility. Though, the facility has been in operation for about 2.5 months and having facilitated at least one such tour during that time; it was only this morning, I finally managed to learn the optimal flow of the facility. Due to the sheer size of the property 1 and the target was to finish the tour in not more than 2 hours, I had to search for the most appropriate route. This also had to cover both food production and non-food operational areas of interest to any outsider, in this case journalist.
A couple of hours before facilitating the tour, I took the opportunity to walk the intended route myself, exploring the stairs & lifts connecting different floors in the 3-story buidling until I was fully conveninced & satisfied myself of the flow. It had to ensure that the guests will be able to see & understand the entire end-to-end process on ground, that ensures some 60,000 individual pieces 2 from tiny toothpicks to large meal trolleys with meal trays are loaded onto the aeroplane.
The route/flow we took started in the ware wash, proceeding to Hot Kitchen, Cold Kitchen, Pastry; followed by food assembly, flight build up and then to tray-setting. We also took a brief around the Bond, before finished the tour in the exclusive First Class kitchen, where guests had a demo from the Chef and had an opportunity to try out a few dishes.
During the tour, among other things, we covered intersting facts such as
- Total build area of the facility - 67,000 sq m 3
- Number of meals produced - 180K of that 35K for premium cabins
- Total number of employees - 3,500
- Total pieces of equipment washed & santitised everyday - 3.1 m
- Royal Dulton bone china offered in Premium cabins
- Number of industry standard dish wash machines -9
- Number of lifts - 18
- Bottles of wines loaded - 8000 daily
to name a few.
Build area is equlant to 9 football fields
Six tons
Equivalent to 9 football fields