Along the gorgeous coast of Newport Beach, you can find The Resort at Pelican Hill. Two golf courses, a pool, multiple restaurants, the resort, bungalows and villas cover 504 acres. To accommodate the guests at their restaurants and those who’d like food sent to their rooms, Chef Kyung Soo Carroll, Director of Culinary Operations at The Resort at Pelican Hill, needs their kitchen to be as efficient as possible.

There’s a reason why food pans have earned the nickname “hotel pans.”

“I don’t even what to think about how many we got just because we have so many. It’s an everyday necessity. Three or four thousand would be a common guess, just because of the fact they are used for everything. They are throughout the resort and it’s important day to day,” said Carroll.

When you’re having to manage up to 4,000 food pans, it’s important to have an effective way to store and transport them. Previously, Carroll and his team stored their food pans like many chefs do, on top of a sheet pan on a speed rack. However, when Carroll implemented the use of Camshelving® Food Pan Trolley, the difference was palpable.

“For our speed racks, you need two things, you need a sheet pan and you need a hotel pan. The food pan trolleys from Cambro…it’s just so much easier to just go straight into our hotel pan and right onto a cart. That saves us one, labor, because we don’t have to wash it all the time,” said Carroll.

Even with Pelican Hill’s large storage rooms, they still struggle with having enough room for their food and equipment.

“Footprint is such a big part of what we do. Everybody has limited cooler space; everybody has limited space as a whole throughout the back of the house. The width of the food pan trolley is just a little above what the hotel pan is and that saves us incredible space,” said Carroll.

“If you look at a regular walk-in cooler and you had to line it up with 7 or 8 speed racks, you’d see how much space it takes up. Now, I could probably get like 10 or 12 of the food pan trolleys in there and have it fit.”

If you’ve ever stored food pans on top of sheet pans, you know they aren’t exactly stable. When you’re moving your racks through doorways and elevators, one bump can cause all of your food pans to slide off.

Safety

“[The Food Pan Trolley] fits perfectly to the width of the hotel pans themselves. We don’t really need to worry about it from that point. If it’s something liquid then we’ll just find a lid and we’ll just put a lid over it. It transports beautifully for us,” said Carroll.

We added a pan stop* to the back of the trolley to further increase safety.

“The pan stop on these carts is actually a big benefit. It’s like one of those things that you would never notice until you needed it. It really is because of the fact that when we pull stuff out of the oven, sometimes it’s a little greasy. That pan stop in the back saves product,” said Carroll.

Speed racks are made for sheet pans. The Food Pan Trolley is made for food pans. Save time and space by finally putting your food pans where they’re meant to be. Contact your local Cambro sales rep to get started today.

*Pan stop launching Summer 2022.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: ADRIANA DESIDERIO IS THE DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER AT CAMBRO.