Britannia AuctionsCatering and hospitality equipment auctions in Nottingham
Pubs. If one word sums up the Nottingham catering trade it is that one. The city has a great many of them, in the centre and in every suburb, and they change hands more often than most people think. When a tenant gives up or a pub company sells a site, there is a kitchen, a cellar, a bar and a lot of furniture to deal with.
Alongside the pubs, Nottingham has a city centre restaurant trade that follows the students and the office workers, hotels around the station, and a wholesale sector in Colwick and on Lenton Lane with cold stores and cash and carry equipment that overlaps with what we sell.
We handle all of it by online timed auction, usually from the premises. Pub sales need a view on who owns what, because the tenancy decides it. Restaurant sales need a collection plan. Hotel sales need a goods lift booked. Wholesale sales need a forklift. Tell us which you have.
What a pub tenant can actually sell
A pub is the one catering business where the seller often does not own most of what is in the building. The tenancy inventory is what settles it, and on many agreements it covers the bar, the cellar cooling and sometimes the kitchen as well. Read it alongside your own purchase records. Before we list a single lot we sit down with the inventory and mark what is yours.
What a tenant has often bought is a useful list: the fryer and the grill they replaced, an espresso machine, a glasswasher, outdoor furniture, till systems, function room chairs and the fridges in the kitchen. It adds up.
Bidding runs online and is open to the rest of the country, and the licensed trade in Mansfield, Ilkeston, Long Eaton and Newark, and the cafes in Beeston, are well placed to come and look before bidding closes. A pub car park usually makes collection simple, which we confirm on the visit.
Cold stores and cash and carry kit in Colwick
The wholesale and food and drink firms along the Trent at Colwick and on Lenton Lane are a different kind of catering sale. Instead of a six burner range there is a walk in cold store the size of a garage, racks of upright glass door fridges, a bank of chest freezers and a serve over counter or two from the trade counter. Some sites have a small production kitchen for ready meals or bakery lines.
We check the loading bay, the hard standing and the approach off the A52 ring road before the catalogue says what vehicle to bring. Cold rooms are sold as panels for the buyer to dismantle, or dismantling can be arranged where that is agreed. Glass door fridges lot well by the pallet and can be bid on without a visit.
Where the wholesale business is closing rather than moving, the catering equipment is usually one section of a larger sale that also covers the racking, forklifts, vehicles and office furniture.
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 Nottingham
- Our restaurant is on a pedestrian street in the city centre. How do buyers collect?
Early, and with a plan. Pedestrian streets usually have a morning delivery window, and we check the hours before we set collection. Each buyer gets a time, and the handling for the large items, the ranges and the cold room panels, is agreed for the route to wherever a vehicle can stand. All of it goes in the listing so nobody turns up in a seven and a half tonne lorry. Where the route defeats trade collection, the kitchen can come to our own premises and be sold there.
- The pub company wants the site back in three weeks. Is that enough time?
It is tight, and the timetable turns on the number of lots and on when buyers can get in. We would propose cataloguing within a day or two of your call, a shorter bidding window of about a week, and collection in the days after the sale closes, leaving time for the gas to be capped by a registered engineer and the kitchen cleaned. What we cannot do is sell the landlord's fixtures, so if the pub company owns the kitchen, the sale will be smaller and quicker than you might expect.
More questions about catering equipment