You built this food trai­ler for Bianchi. When I look around this enorm­ous faci­li­ty, I think that was rather a small order for you? 

No, you can­not say that. All our depart­ments were invol­ved. Many hands work­ed on it; it is a very high-qua­li­ty pro­duct. A gre­at deal of deve­lo­p­ment work went into it. We que­stio­ned ever­ything, wan­ted to know exact­ly what pos­si­bi­li­ties exi­sted for deploying this object. We then dis­co­ver­ed that we could not sol­ve the mul­ti­tu­de of appli­ca­ti­on opti­ons with a sin­gle object, but that we had to build a „fami­ly.“ An offe­ring in S, M, and L, so to speak. There are events that requi­re a more com­pact ver­si­on. The trai­ler is now the lar­gest model curr­ent­ly available; pos­si­bly the lar­ge ver­si­on will fol­low in the form of a food truck. 

How did that come about?

Bianchi wan­ted to opti­mi­ze its booth pre­sence at public events. Luca Bianchi had deve­lo­ped a con­cept for a food truck for Bianchi as part of his final thesis—that was the start­ing point. It was about eva­lua­ting pos­si­bi­li­ties that fit and func­tion, whereu­pon we deve­lo­ped a modu­lar system. We star­ted with the smal­lest, with a coun­ter, and then work­ed our way up. 

What did the truck have to ful­fill? Did it also have to ser­ve as a pre­pa­ra­ti­on station? 

In the area of mobi­le cate­ring objects, this was the first time at this size and in this series. We real­ly threw our­sel­ves into the pro­ject, brought in num­e­rous spe­cia­lists and struc­tu­ral engi­neers who advi­sed us. Nevertheless, we paid our tuition. 

Paid your tuition?

The coun­ter was plan­ned as a mobi­le ele­ment, which we then rea­li­zed as such. Only our under­stan­ding of „mobi­le“ was some­what dif­fe­rent from that of Bianchi. For us, it was „mobi­le“ if you could move it. For Bianchi, if you could move it with ease. The coun­ter was hea­vier than desi­red; moving it requi­red a few peo­p­le with mus­cle power. Bianchi wan­ted a ver­si­on many times ligh­ter. So we set to work again and incor­po­ra­ted this component. 

So far, that makes three ele­ments: the coun­ter, a light ver­si­on of the coun­ter, and the trai­ler. With the trai­ler, spe­cial regu­la­ti­ons cer­tain­ly had to be met regar­ding food preparation. 

We work­ed with the aut­ho­ri­ties of the Canton of Aargau, so we knew about requi­re­ments such as fire extin­gu­is­hers and snee­ze guards…

… Sneeze guards?

…yes, that is a panel at the appro­pria­te height that pro­tects the food from public access. The coun­ter will only be used for „cold kit­chen,“ the trai­ler also for „hot kitchen.“ 

How long did the enti­re pro­ject take?

All in all, about a year, from plan­ning and the first sket­ches to deli­very of the first element.

Everything had to run smooth­ly, right?

We had to rethink ever­ything from the ground up, could not draw on simi­lar expe­ri­ence any­whe­re. But Bianchi is the most desi­ra­ble cus­to­mer: they cle­ar­ly sta­te what they want, cle­ar­ly sta­te when some­thing is not as they ima­gi­ned it, and they are loy­al, give you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cor­rect mista­kes, and are noti­ce­ab­ly plea­sed with the result in the end. Here you noti­ce the atti­tu­de of a fami­ly busi­ness: the app­re­cia­ti­on of good work is enormous.