Café O’Vesta at the Western Hospital, Footscray
As further proof of our ability to “hit the ground running”, we took over the main cafeteria at Western Health’s Footscray campus at 6am on Monday 6th September 2004 and commenced trading immediately. News of the instant improvement to food, coffee and service quickly spread throughout the hospital, generating a great deal of excitement regarding the cosmetic and structural changes we were to finish in effectively three months.
By the second week of December the same year, when we were to provide hot Christmas lunch for 2800 staff across Western Health’s various sites, we had…
- connected gas to the hospital mains over 200 meters from the kitchen
- outfitted the kitchen with rationale oven, new appliances, rangehood
- ripped up all the stained carpet tiles, sanded back the concrete and laid remaining area
- tiled and painted all the wall surfaces and ceiling, making a feature of the circular windows facing the front of the hospital and the circular light-well in the middle of the seating area
- drastically altered the menus offered for both in-house dining and catering, greatly increasing the quality and variety
- outfitted both the staff and main cafeteria areas with attractive furniture
- constructed and set up a full-scale office from which we could administer the operation including the SmartCards
- introduced stylish light-boxes and erected a clear glass divider which would later be graced with life-sized photo transparencies of hospital staff where solid black screens had always been used to hide the staff area along with its access to natural light and appealing circular windows.
None of our renovations caused even five minutes interruption to trade.
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