Britannia AuctionsCatering and hospitality equipment auctions in Warrington
Warrington's catering equipment sits inside other people's businesses more often than on the high street. The big warehouses at Omega and around Gemini and Winwick Quay each carry a canteen for the shift. Birchwood Park has staff restaurants serving the nuclear and energy engineering firms. When a contract caterer loses the site, or the occupier moves, a fitted kitchen with counters, refrigeration and a dishwasher line is left in a building that is about to be handed back.
Then there are the pubs, restaurants, cafes and takeaways in the town and the villages, which change hands the way they do anywhere.
We sell all of it by online timed auction. We visit, agree what is in the sale, catalogue it where it stands and run the bidding online with one viewing day. Widnes, Runcorn, St Helens and Wigan are within a comfortable drive of the viewing day, as are Liverpool and Manchester, and bidding is open to buyers from any part of the country.
Contract caterers and the kit they leave behind
A catering contract ending is a common trigger for a sale here, and it raises a question that a restaurant sale does not. Who owns the kitchen? On many contracts the occupier owns the fixed installation, the extraction, the counters, the sinks and the cold room, and the caterer owns the combination ovens, the coffee machine, the small equipment and the tills. On others the caterer owns everything. We read the contract and the asset schedule before we catalogue, and we will run two accounts in one sale where the ownership is split.
The kit itself is good. Canteens on the distribution estates are fitted to feed hundreds of people a day, so the ovens are large and the dishwashers are rack conveyors rather than under counter units. The refrigeration is commercial grade throughout. Office park restaurants at Birchwood are lighter, with more front of house furniture and coffee equipment, and that suits cafes.
Collection from either is usually a loading bay job with a pallet truck, inside the site's own security hours, and we confirm the access and the site rules on the visit.
Between two cities on the M62
Warrington sits between two cities with a lot of catering dealers in them. Both are within a comfortable drive of the viewing day, as are Northwich, Knutsford, Leigh and Altrincham, and bidding is online and open across the UK. What a lot makes still depends on its condition, its specification and how hard it is to remove.
Access is checked site by site: what the yard will take, the turning space, the door sizes and the loading arrangements, with the findings in the catalogue. Town centre pubs are usually the tighter job, and for those we run collection in booked slots with heavy items dismantled by the buyer's own crew.
If the building has to be handed back on a set date, we work the sale back from that date.
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 Warrington
- The warehouse is being handed back and the canteen is on the first floor. Is that a problem?
Not usually. We check the goods lift, its capacity and the stair width on our visit and put both in the listing. How the ovens and the counters come down depends on their weight and that route, with the handling equipment or crew to match, and a cold room is dismantled in panels by the buyer's crew. The landlord or the managing agent needs to know the collection dates, because the lift often has to stay in service until the last lot is out.
- We run a pub in the town centre. Will the brewery let us sell the cellar kit?
Only if you own it. Beer coolers, pythons and cellar cooling are often supplied by the brewery or the pub company rather than bought, and the tenancy and dispense agreements decide what happens to them. The kitchen is different: a range, fryers, refrigeration and a dishwasher that you bought are yours. Check your tenancy agreement and any inventory that was signed at the start. We go through the inventory with you before we catalogue, so nothing that belongs to the pub company ends up in the sale by mistake.
More questions about catering equipment