Foodies’ favourite Charlie Bigham has been designing delicious dishes with top quality ingredients since 1996.

And over the past five years, we’re proud of providing him with bespoke solutions that help optimise his food production processes.

So we were delighted to catch up with Charlie recently for a chat about our journey together — here are a few of the highlights.

Penmann: Hi Charlie. Can you please give us an idea of what you look for in your suppliers?

Charlie Bigham: I set up this business over 20 years ago to make delicious food.

And there’s one thing we’re looking for — people we can partner with over the long-term, who we like working with and that understand what we do.

P: So when did you start working with Penmann?

CB: We’ve been working with Penmann for around five years — we’ve now just completed our third project with Penmann.

At one of our sites in London where we’d never cooked before, we got Penmann involved from the start. The first project involved putting in a large extraction canopy and for the second project, we installed another one a few years later.

P: What’s your experience of extraction and ventilation systems?

CB: When we moved from just preparing food to actually cooking dishes about 15 years ago, I thought that it didn’t matter too much about extraction — I had an extraction unit at home and thought I’d just need a slightly bigger version for work.

That was a big mistake — we used a supplier who was not very good. Once we started cooking in earnest, we had all sorts of problems with the room filling with smoke and the heat building up.

So I learned early on that heating and ventilation are things you need to do in a very considered way and you want to have an expert supplier to work with.

P: How have Penmann performed for you?

CB: Very often, the quality of the kit you end up with is measured by how little you notice it. I’m glad to say that on the two installations Penmann did for us in London we’ve had no issues with the equipment and it’s worked very well. Six months in, down here in Somerset, it also seems to be working extremely well.

P: Were Penmann successful in meeting deadlines?

CB: As always, when we work on projects there are very tight timescales and a lot of contractors are working together.

Penmann have worked very well with the other contractors they have to work around, and we’ve never had an issue with them meeting timescales.

P: Would you recommend Penmann to others?

CB: I would be very happy to recommend Penmann. They’ve done three good jobs for us and I hope they’ll do many more for us in the future.

We’re always extremely happy when a long-term valued customer reports that we’ve consistently delivered high-quality climatic systems solutions for their business.

If you want to find out more about our work for Charlie Bigham, please take a look at this blog.