Chester
Catering equipment hire in Chester.
Crockery, glassware, ovens and hot cupboards delivered to Chester, Ellesmere Port and Neston from our depot in Netherley, Liverpool. Prices are on the site, and delivery is priced by postcode.
Crockery, glassware, ovens and hot cupboards delivered to Chester, Ellesmere Port and Neston from our depot in Netherley, Liverpool. Prices are on the site, and delivery is priced by postcode.
Yes. We deliver and collect across the CH1 to CH4 districts around Chester and the CH64, CH65 and CH66 districts that take in Neston, Parkgate, Ellesmere Port and Little Sutton. Everything goes out from our own depot at Wheathill Industrial Estate in Netherley, Liverpool L27 0YA, on our own vans, and comes back to the same place to be washed and checked.
That matters for two reasons. First, the van is starting a short run away, not halfway across the North West, so the delivery figure is lower and easier to predict. Second, when something on the list needs changing, you are talking to the depot that holds the stock. Event Equip is the hire side of Four Seasons Catering. We started hiring out kit in 2017, after years of using it on our own events, and Marco, who owns the business, has spent more than 40 years in hospitality.
The range runs to around 223 lines in nine collections: crockery in Athena white hotel porcelain, Kings and Harley cutlery, glassware by the crate, table linen, trestle tables, cooking and hot-holding kit, bar fridges, serving ware and outdoor cooking. It is built for weddings and parties in halls, hotels and marquees, caterers who need extra ovens or hot cupboards for a big job, and clubs or companies running a summer do.
For Birkenhead and the rest of the peninsula, see our Wirral page; for Halton, the Runcorn page.
From Netherley the van crosses the Mersey on the Mersey Gateway at Runcorn, then picks up the M56 west and the M53 down to Chester or Ellesmere Port. The Gateway is tolled, so any crossing on your order is added to the quote at cost, with no mark-up.
The crossing is run by merseyflow on a free-flow system with no barriers. From April 2025 the charge for a car or van (Class 2) is £2.15 to £2.40 a crossing, depending on how the vehicle is registered. A normal order is two visits, delivery and collection, and each visit is there and back, so that is four crossings: under £10 on the whole order at those prices.
The figures in the table below are worked out the same way as the calculator on our delivery page: approximate road miles from L27 0YA, at £1.50 a mile in the small Citroën Dispatch or £2.00 a mile in the Citroën Relay Luton with a tail-lift, counted there and back, for each of the two visits. Each visit has a £50 minimum, which is why the nearer districts all come out at £100 for the pair. Because the van has to go round by the bridge, the true route to some CH addresses runs a little further than a straight-line estimate suggests, so your written quote is always priced on the actual route to your postcode.
Which van you get depends on the heaviest thing on the list. Crockery, cutlery, glass crates, linen and boxed tableware go in the Dispatch. Ovens, fridges, hot cupboards, bars, trestles, BBQs and hog roasts need the Luton and its tail-lift. One large item puts the whole load in the Luton, so think twice before adding a single fridge to a small order.
Ellesmere Port and Neston sit closest to the Gateway and M56, so they are the cheapest drops here. Chester itself and the villages south of the Dee cost a little more.
Figures cover delivery and collection, ex VAT: each visit is £1.50 a mile in the Citroën Dispatch or £2.00 a mile in the Luton, on the road miles there and back, with a £50 minimum a visit. Loading and unloading is £12.50 per started half hour, and tolls, parking and permits are added at cost. Distances are approximate from L27 0YA; your written quote uses the actual route. Collect from the depot yourself and there is no delivery charge.
For a sit-down wedding of 120 guests in a marquee near Tattenhall (CH3), with the caterer cooking on site on gas, the list below comes to £1,910.33 ex VAT for a 2-day hire, plus £160.00 delivery and collection in the Luton. That is £2,070.33 before loading time, the bridge toll and VAT.
The guests sit at twelve 5ft rounds of ten, with a three-course meal, bread on side plates and a fizz toast. Quantities are rounded up to the pack size, so you have ten spares of each crockery and cutlery item for drops and late additions.
Tableware comes to £1,111.08, the kitchen equipment to £684.25 and the gas to £115.00. The prices already include our standard cleaning, so nothing is added for washing up. The refundable security deposit is half the equipment hire ex VAT, which here would be £897.67, over the normal £500 ceiling, so it is £500, back within 7 working days of the kit coming home in good order.
Change any line and the sums move with it. Swap the wine glass for the 125ml version at £9.72 a crate if the bar is pouring small measures, or drop the side plates if bread is going on the table in baskets. The event planner builds a list like this from your guest count.
Book as early as you can for any weekend between May and September. That is the Chester Races season at the Roodee, and it overlaps with wedding season, garden parties and the bank holidays, so the same weekends fill up for everyone at once.
Those dates also count as peak on our side. Summer weekends, bank holidays and Christmas to New Year are priced higher than the list prices on the site, and the uplift is shown on your written quote so you see it before you agree to anything. Online booking closes 3 days before the delivery date, so anything later than that needs a phone call, and it depends on what is still on the shelf.
If you are running something that needs permission, the council's clock usually matters more than ours. Cheshire West and Chester, which covers both Chester and Ellesmere Port, asks for outdoor event applications on its own timetable:
Two national rules catch people out with pop-up bars and food stalls. A Temporary Event Notice is needed to sell alcohol, put on regulated entertainment, or sell hot food or drink between 11pm and 5am. It costs £21, covers fewer than 500 people at any one time including staff, and has to reach the council at least 10 clear working days before the event. And if you are selling food at all, you register as a food business with the council for the site at least 28 days before you start trading, which includes temporary and mobile set-ups. Get those sorted, then send us the list.
Use gas for the heavy cooking and hot holding, and keep electric for the smaller kit, unless the venue can show you plenty of separate circuits. The reason is the 13 amp socket.
A standard UK socket is rated for 13 amps, which at 230 volts is roughly 3,000 watts. Several of our electric items are built to use most of that by themselves. The Lincat Lynx 400 XL convection oven draws 2.5 kW. The electric hot cupboard, the 60cm griddle and the 3,000W table-top fryer are all 13 amp items. Run two of them off one socket or one extension lead, which is rated at 13 amps for the whole lead, and you are asking for well over what it can carry. The fuse or breaker goes, usually just as the mains are going out. A water boiler and a hot cupboard sharing a socket at the back of a hall do the same.
So with electric, the question for the venue is how many separate circuits you can use, not how many sockets you can see. A village hall might give you two or three. A marquee on a farm field may have one feed or none, and then you are into a generator, sized by whoever supplies it.
Gas takes the load off. The LPG cooker, LPG hot cupboard, gas fryer, stockpot ring and gas water boiler all run off bottles. Every LPG item goes out with its regulator, and the gas is charged separately. For a marquee kitchen, a typical split is gas for the cooker, hot cupboard and boiler, then electric only for a toaster, a panini press or an 1800W induction hob, each on its own socket.
The bigger Buffalo induction hobs in our catering range are 16 or 32 amp items. They need a matching supply, not a household plug.
As a rough guide, allow one 9-litre chafing dish per hot dish for every 50 guests, and order glasses at about one and a half per guest for any drink served all evening. These are starting points, not fixed rules: your caterer's portion sizes and how long service runs will move them, but they get most buffets and bars close before you fine-tune.
For a hot buffet of 100 with a meat main, a vegetarian main, rice and potatoes, that guide gives you eight dishes. Many caterers run fewer dishes on the table and keep a second full tray of each in a hot cupboard, swapping it in when the first runs low. The food stays hotter and the table looks fuller. Our oblong chafing dish is £20.25 and can be split into two sections, which is handy for sides. The oval 4.5-litre dish suits sauces and smaller quantities, and the round 9-litre dish is good for curries and stews. Chafing fuel gel is £1.73 each, so order enough for the length of your service, with a couple spare.
Glasses come by the crate, which makes the maths simple. Pints, half pints, hi-balls, rocks and wine glasses come in crates of 24, champagne flutes in 35s, and gin balloons, martini glasses and saucers in 12s. Guests put glasses down and take fresh ones, and washing up behind a marquee bar is slow. For 150 guests drinking pints and wine, that is 225 of each, or ten crates of each, at £9.72 a crate for pints and £10.80 for the 175ml wine glass. Add a crate or two of flutes if there is a toast.
The sizing guide goes through quantities for crockery, cutlery and linen in the same way.
They are the cheapest part of this area to deliver to. CH65 (Ellesmere Port, Whitby, Wolverham) and CH66 (Little Sutton, Great Sutton, Childer Thornton, Hooton, Overpool) are both around 11 miles from the depot, so delivery and collection is the £100 minimum in either van, even with an oven or a fridge on board.
CH64 takes in Neston, Little Neston, Parkgate, Ness, Willaston and Burton. At roughly 14 miles it is still £100 in the small van and £112 in the Luton. The same Gateway crossing applies on the way in and out, and is added at cost.
A smaller do needs less kit: a christening or wake at a church hall or sports club, a garden party, a work barbecue. Two 20-litre electric water boilers at £33.75 each, stacking cups and saucers at £0.54 each, a few trestle tables at £8.64 and some white napkins cover a lot of afternoon teas. For a barbecue, the LPG flatbed griddle and the charcoal BBQ are in our outdoor cooking range, both Luton items.
If the event is further up towards Bromborough or Port Sunlight, that is CH62, about 9 miles out and also the £100 minimum.
Usually yes, provided we know about the access before the day. For anything heavy we ask you to send photos: the door widths, any steps or kerbs, the route from where the van stops to where the kit will stand, and the van space itself. A Lincat oven or a three-door counter fridge will not go up a narrow staircase or through a single door with a tight turn, and it is far better to find that out from a photo than on the pavement.
Chester has plenty of old buildings, upstairs function rooms and venues a short walk from where a van can stop. That changes the time it takes. Loading, unloading and any waiting are charged at £12.50 for each half hour or part of one, so a straight ground-floor drop costs little and a long carry costs more. Parking charges and any permits the driver needs are passed on at cost.
What we do on the day is deliver, unload and collect. We do not set out the furniture or lay the tables, so plan for your own team, the venue staff or your caterer to do the set-up. Four Seasons Catering can also cater the event itself if you would rather hand the food over completely; ask when you send the list.
Build a list on the site or call us, and we send a written quote within one working day. Nothing is charged until you accept it.
To confirm, you pay 25% of the quote. The balance is due 7 days before the kit is handed over. We also take a refundable security deposit of half the equipment hire ex VAT, at least £100 and normally no more than £500, which is returned within 7 working days of the collection. Hire is priced for 2 days. If we deliver on a Thursday or Friday and collect on the Monday or Tuesday, that is normally charged as one hire, and the quote confirms it.
When it comes back, you do not wash anything. Scrape the plates, empty the glasses and dishes, and pack everything back in the crates it arrived in, with the glasses sorted by type into the right racks. Kit sent back mixed up or loose may be charged for sorting at £18 an hour plus VAT. Keep the linen dry and do not wash it. The full detail is on the hire terms page.
To get a price for your Chester postcode, send us the list through the site, call 0151 230 1600 and choose option 2, message us on WhatsApp on 07506 232976, or email [email protected]. The contact page has the depot address.
To CH1, the city centre and Blacon side, delivery and collection is £102.00 ex VAT in the small van or £136.00 in the Luton, plus loading time and the Mersey Gateway toll at cost. CH2 (Hoole, Upton) is £100.00 or £128.00. CH3 and CH4 are a little further out, so they come in higher, as the table above shows. Your quote uses the actual route.
Yes. The Mersey Gateway is the normal way across the river from our depot, and it is tolled. We add the crossings on your order as a separate line at what they cost us, with no handling charge on top. A standard order is four crossings, delivery there and back and collection there and back, which at current merseyflow prices for a van is under £10 in total.
Yes. The CH4 district runs over the border into Flintshire, and we deliver there on the same mileage rates as the rest of the area. CH4 is about 21 miles from the depot, so delivery and collection is £126.00 in the small van or £168.00 in the Luton, ex VAT. Send us the full postcode and we will price the actual route.
Yes, and it often helps. Delivery on a Thursday or Friday with collection on the Monday or Tuesday is normally charged as one 2-day hire, so you get time to set up and time to clear down without paying twice. The quote confirms it for your dates. Summer Saturdays are peak dates, so book early and expect peak pricing on the quote.
No. We deliver, unload and collect. Setting out furniture, laying tables and dressing the room are for your own team, the venue or your caterer. Time spent unloading and waiting is charged at £12.50 per started half hour, so a clear route and someone to meet the van keeps the cost down.
If you are selling alcohol and the venue does not already have a licence that covers it, you will normally need a Temporary Event Notice from Cheshire West and Chester. It costs £21, covers fewer than 500 people at a time including staff, and must be given at least 10 clear working days before the event. Selling food also means registering as a food business at least 28 days before trading.
Yes. Collect from the depot at Unit 16, Wheathill Industrial Estate, Holt Lane, Netherley, L27 0YA by appointment and there is no delivery charge. It suits small orders of crockery, glass and linen best. Bring a vehicle big enough for the crates, and for heavy items like ovens or fridges, check you can lift them safely at the other end.
Glasses come in racks by type, and we ask for them to go back the same way: empty, sorted and in the right racks. You do not need to wash them, as cleaning is included in the price. If kit comes back mixed or loose, we may charge for the time it takes to sort it, at £18 an hour plus VAT, so a few minutes of packing at the end of the night is worth it.
Birkenhead to West Kirby, CH41 to CH63. Most Wirral postcodes are £100 delivery and collection in the small van.
RuncornWA7 from 9 miles: £100 delivery and collection in either van, plus the bridge toll at cost. Frodsham and Helsby too.
WarringtonWA1 to WA5 from £100 delivery and collection, no toll on most routes. Lymm (WA13) and Birchwood too.
LiverpoolOur depot is in Netherley, L27. Delivery and collection from the city centre out to Aintree is £100 ex VAT.
Free itemised quote within one working day — no deposit needed to ask.