Britannia AuctionsCatering and hospitality equipment auctions in Reading
When a technology firm gives up a floor at Green Park or Thames Valley Park, the staff restaurant goes with it. The contract caterer packs up, the landlord wants the space back as shell, and somewhere in the middle there is a kitchen that fed a few hundred people at lunchtime and was cleaned to a corporate standard every day. That is a good kitchen to sell.
Reading has a lot of them, because it has a lot of office parks. It also has the business hotels along the M4 that serve the same firms, the pubs along the Thames that change tenants, the cafes on the retail parks, and the town centre restaurants that turn over like anywhere else. Beneath the office parks, the trading estates at Battle Farm and Robert Cort hold trade suppliers and workshops with small canteens.
We sell all of it by online timed auction from the premises. Bidding is open nationally, and Wokingham, Bracknell, Newbury and Basingstoke are close enough to attend a viewing day.
Staff restaurants when an office tenant leaves
An office park staff restaurant has a useful combination of equipment behind it. It was specified by a contract caterer, so it is built for volume: combination ovens, a hot servery, a salad bar, a coffee bar with a bean to cup machine or two, a dishwasher line and cold rooms. Where it was maintained under contract, the service records are worth having for the catalogue.
The awkward part is the building. Office parks usually have a loading bay and a goods lift, and they also have facilities managers, access cards, out of hours rules and a date in the dilapidations schedule. We work inside those rules. Collection is booked and buyers are escorted. The heavy lots go out in one slot with a crew.
Contract caterers, hotel groups, school and college kitchens and other office caterers are the market for it, and the Thames Valley is close enough to inspect the lots before the sale closes.
Hotels by the motorway, pubs by the river
The hotels near the M4 junctions live on weekday business trade. When a firm moves its people out of Reading, or a hotel is refurbished or rebranded, the restaurant and bar equipment is sold. These are service yard sales: a van at the back, booked slots, a porter to show buyers the way, and a working hotel carrying on in front. We sell the surplus and leave the trading kitchen alone.
Pubs along the Thames and in the villages towards Henley-on-Thames and Wokingham change tenants often, and the inventory signed at the start is what settles who owns what. We go through it first. An extra fryer, the coffee machine, the outdoor furniture and the till are often the tenant's, but the inventory and the purchase records decide it rather than the assumption.
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 Reading
- The dilapidations schedule says the kitchen must be stripped to shell. Do buyers do that?
Partly. Buyers remove what they have bought, and for fixed items like canopies, ductwork, cold room panels and fixed benching, we sell them for dismantling and the buyer's crew takes them out. What is left after the sale, capped pipework and wall cladding, is for your contractor. We coordinate the collection window with the strip out so the two do not get in each other's way, and the last collection day can be set ahead of the landlord's date to give the contractor room.
- The caterer's contract ends before our lease does. Can we keep some equipment for a few months?
Yes. Tell us what you want to keep and we leave it out of the catalogue. Many tenants keep a coffee machine, a fridge, a dishwasher and a microwave for the last few months and sell them later with the office furniture. It is better to decide before we photograph than after, because withdrawing a lot from a live auction is unfair on the people bidding on it. If the lease end is more than a few months away, we can also run the canteen sale now and come back for the rest of the floor as a second sale later.
More questions about catering equipment