The Commission at Heathrow

The Commission is a new 175-seater casual dining and cocktail bar concept at Heathrow’s Terminal 4.
A Drake & Morgan site, it’s operated by hospitality and foodservice company Delaware North and is open 16 hours a day, from breakfast to late night dinner and snacks. Since it’s ‘airside’, there are lots of restrictions – for example, getting service engineers in for breakdowns takes time. Meanwhile, it’s a high-pressure site with a constant stream of customers who often want to be served quickly.

All of which means the catering equipment has to be reliable, efficient and capable of delivering a high performance, which is why The Commission has Williams’ refrigeration.

The kitchen project was managed by the Airedale Group. The airside restrictions were further complicated by build hold ups resulting in Airedale’s window for installing the kitchen being cut from ten days to just three.
Nils Braude is operational director for Delaware North’s travel sector. “Installation was challenging, but Airedale put in a good shift and we opened with everything working!” he says. “Space in an airport is at a premium, so the kitchen had to be as small as possible. For example, with the refrigeration we needed maximum storage in the smallest possible space. It also needed to be energy efficient.”