Britannia AuctionsCatering and hospitality equipment auctions in Northampton
The biggest kitchens in Northampton are not in restaurants. They are inside the warehouses at Brackmills, Swan Valley and Pineham, where a canteen feeds three shifts and a contract caterer runs it around the clock. When a warehouse changes tenant, or the caterer loses the contract, the whole kitchen is sold. It is volume equipment in a building with a loading dock, and it can usually be sold from where it stands.
The second stream is event catering. Firms that feed the crowds at the circuits and showgrounds reachable off the A43 keep their kit in units on the older estates, and when the season ends or a contract goes elsewhere, mobile kitchens, hot cupboards and stacks of banqueting furniture come to market.
Pubs, hotels, cafes and takeaways in the town make up the rest. We sell all of it by online timed auction. Bidding is open to bidders anywhere in the UK, and Wellingborough, Kettering, Daventry and Rugby are well placed for the viewing day.
Canteens that feed a warehouse around the clock
A canteen at Brackmills or Swan Valley is built to serve hundreds of meals a day in short bursts, and the equipment shows it. Two or more combination ovens, a hot servery with a long run of bain maries, an industrial dishwasher, walk in cold rooms, banks of vending machines, and a dining hall of tables and chairs that sell in stacks. Where it was bought new by the caterer and serviced on a contract, the service records are worth having for the catalogue.
Collection is usually the simpler part. Where the lots can go out through the goods door onto a dock on pallets, and the site can provide a forklift and a driver, it moves quickly. We agree a collection window that fits the site's traffic, because a distribution yard has lorries in it all day.
The market is other contract caterers, hotel groups, colleges and pub operators, with the vending and the furniture lotted in quantity for a dealer.
Event kitchens when the season closes
Event catering kit is a category of its own. Mobile kitchen units, gas ranges on wheels, hot cupboards, urns, mobile bars and beer coolers, trestle tables and hundreds of folding chairs, all stored in a unit on Moulton Park or Round Spinney between jobs. It comes to auction when a caterer retires or loses a season's contracts, and it usually comes at the end of the year.
That timing can help. Event kit suits other event caterers, marquee firms, festival operators and hire companies, and a sale in the winter puts it in front of them before the season rather than after it. The seller's dates come first.
Whether a complete set or single lots suit better depends on what is there and on who is likely to want it, and we give you a view before the catalogue is written. Mobile kitchens are usually catalogued as single lots, with the small kit in trays.
What these sales can include
- Cooking ranges and ovens
- Combination ovens
- Fryers and griddles
- Cold rooms and walk in freezers
- Upright and under counter refrigeration
- Display and serve over counters
- Dishwashers and glasswashers
- Ice machines
- Espresso machines and grinders
- Stainless steel tables and sinks
- Extraction canopies
- Bar equipment and beer coolers
- Tables, chairs and banquette seating
- Tills and till systems
How the sale runs
We visit, agree what is in the sale and catalogue it. Each lot is photographed and described as it stands, with known faults noted. The sale is listed online and marketed to operators and dealers across the UK. Buyers view on a set day and bid online, with lots closing in sequence on the sale date.
Lots are offered as seen under the auction terms, and buyers are expected to inspect before bidding. The buyer pays the hammer price plus a buyer's premium, with VAT charged where it applies and shown separately. We take payment before anything is released.
Collection follows over a window agreed with you. Buyers arrange and pay for removal, and our staff attend so that services are dealt with correctly and the premises are left as agreed with the landlord.
The catering and hospitality equipment auctions page covers what a catering sale looks like, disconnecting services and extraction, what your lease allows you to sell, clean it, label it, leave it working.
Questions about selling in Northampton
- Our warehouse tenant is leaving and the landlord wants the canteen area stripped. Who pays for that?
Not us, and usually not the buyer beyond their own lots. Buyers remove what they have bought, including fixed items sold for dismantling such as the servery counter, the canopy and the cold room panels. What remains, capped services, floor tiles and wall cladding, is a matter between tenant and landlord under the lease. We plan the collection days to finish before your contractor starts, and we hand you a signed list of what left the building so the dilapidations paperwork is straightforward.
- Can we sell a mobile kitchen trailer that is still road registered?
Yes. A trailer or a converted vehicle sells as a single lot with its registration, its gas certificate and its history, and we photograph the plates and the interior so buyers know what they are getting. If it is on finance the lender must consent first. Buyers arrange the collection themselves, by towing or on a low loader, and we agree the window with you. Where the trailer is worth a good deal on its own, we may suggest private treaty rather than the auction, and we will give you a view on that when we see it.
More questions about catering equipment