FEEDING YOUR WORKFORCE POST-HURRICANE: KITCHEN TRAILERS AND DINING STRUCTURES

After a hurricane severely impacts a community, the overwhelming destruction can leave communities stunned and uncertain about how to proceed. Despite the catastrophe, the demands of life and business quickly return. Customers require necessary services, and workforces need to serve their communities.

One of the chief requirements for returning to normalcy after a hurricane is access to food. However, businesses may struggle to prepare and serve nourishing meals to their staff and customers in a disaster area. If your business faces devastating storm damage alongside unrelenting customer needs, temporary dining solutions can offer a bridge to a well-fed future for your workers and clientele.

How Do You Feed Your Workforce Post-Hurricane?

Even after the destruction of a hurricane, you can still provide proper sustenance to your staff and customers through emergency catering services, mobile kitchen trailers and temporary dining structures.

Emergency Catering Services

Emergency catering offers meal solutions to keep your workforce nourished after a hurricane. An emergency caterer can provide necessary food to workers and allow your business to continue serving your patrons.

For example, a turnkey support services provider like Cotton Logistics, in partnership with its sister company Cotton Culinary, can offer efficient emergency food services to staff in storm-damaged areas. Cotton creates varied meals prepared by culinary experts to ensure your team is fed quickly and safely. Their experience coordinating emergency responses means they can adapt to your company’s unique situation and the surrounding environmental conditions. Cotton’s staff are trained to operate safely in disaster response events to ensure your employees do not miss a meal.

Regardless of the vendor you select, emergency catering can help you meet your meal requirements across many industries, such as education, energy and government. Utility companies also may use emergency catering to give their workers quick meals as they work to restore power to communities’ electrical grids. Businesses across these and other industries could utilize emergency catering as a short-term solution for providing efficient breakfasts, ready-to-go boxed lunches or sustaining dinners.

Some advantages of using emergency catering services in the wake of hurricane damage include:

• Speed - You can quickly get your workforce the food they need to continue restoring hurricane damage across the community. 
• Nourishment -  Catering post-hurricane provides food that keeps your workers fueled and ready to work.
• Variety - Emergency catering allows for varied and nutritious meals, and companies like Cotton offer customizable menus with different food options so your workforce can have a multitude of meals.

To maximize the utility of emergency catering, you can couple this service with mobile kitchen trailers or full dining structures to meet the needs of your staff and clientele.

Mobile Kitchen Trailers

Mobile kitchen trailers provide a temporary unit for food preparation if your normal flow of food operations is disrupted. These trailers allow for continued culinary work and food service if a hurricane wipes out your kitchen or if your workforce needs meals in the field.

The mobile kitchen trailers from a vendor like Cotton Logistics are designed to mobilize where your business requires food services. The skid- or wheel-mounted units provide a portable, code-compliant kitchen space with support crews to get your workforce the energizing meals they need. Additionally, Cotton’s kitchen trailers can be combined with reefer trailers that provide refrigeration for cold storage so food and beverages can stay properly chilled.

Kitchen trailers may be used by companies looking to provide temporary food solutions to their staff during hurricane recovery efforts. Restaurants, hotels, construction companies and hurricane recovery companies may all require efficient, reliable food options while working in disaster areas. No matter your industry, the trailers can be brought where you need them.

Some advantages of using mobile kitchen trailers after hurricanes include:

• Mobility - Portable kitchen trailers can go directly to your workers’ job sites, even in remote locations.
• Efficiency - Meals can be produced quickly within the trailers and served directly to your workforce.
• Productivity - When mobile kitchen trailers come to your workers’ location, even in remote or dangerous areas, you can keep your workforce close to the job site. This can reduce the time staff travels to get food, helping them focus on their work.
• Safety - Reducing travel time for meals in a disaster zone can prevent staff from commuting in potentially hazardous road conditions.

Temporary Dining Structures

Temporary dining structures can offer long-term and large-scale solutions to providing meals after a hurricane’s destruction. From smaller mobile facilities to complex modular venues capable of serving thousands of people, temporary dining structures offer flexibility in interim food service. 

For instance, Cotton Logistics’ temporary dining structures come in varied styles and sizes of lunch tents and larger facilities that you can combine with other temporary facilities. Partnering dining structures with restroom trailers and handwashing stations can provide a temporary yet comfortable full-service dining arrangement after a hurricane. You can also request the addition of kitchen equipment for food preparation with Cotton’s dining structures.

Temporary dining structures can be used in many cases, including for hotels, hospitals or public schools whose kitchens and cafeterias have been damaged or destroyed. As an example, temporary dining structures were implemented when Cotton Logistics supported a university system that needed dining solutions after their dining hall became unusable due to a disaster. Cotton developed a full-service temporary kitchen and dining facility to provide a welcoming atmosphere even amidst the interruptions of the renovation.

Some advantages of temporary dining structures following hurricanes include:

• Business Continuity - Following hurricanes, dining and serving can continue so your employees can keep working and your customers can keep bringing you business.
• Scalability - Dining structures can serve a range of crowds and can include smaller mobile kitchens or full-scale, cafeteria-type temporary building structures.
• Versatility - When partnering with a company like Cotton Logistics, the temporary dining structures can be combined with other temporary facilities to provide solutions for your specific needs.
• Comfort During Adversity - Even in a hurricane’s aftermath, you can give your workers or customers a safe environment to eat in. 

Staying Nourished Post-Hurricane

Although hurricanes can devastate communities and leave them unsure of the best step forward, your business can confidently move ahead with temporary dining solutions to begin the road to recovery. For catering and disaster dining solutions in dire circumstances, rely on a turnkey support services provider like Cotton Logistics and their full suite of temporary support solutions. By combining emergency catering with mobile kitchen trailers and temporary dining structures, you can keep your workers or clients well-fed even in some of nature’s most devastating conditions.

For turnkey solutions and emergency catering you can trust, call Cotton Logistics at 877-427-2947 or visit CottonLogistics.com to learn more.