Crockery, glassware, ovens and hot cupboards delivered to Manchester, Salford, Sale and Altrincham from our depot in Netherley, Liverpool, about 30 miles away. Delivery costs more here than in Liverpool, so this page shows the real figures and when it is worth it.
Yes. We deliver and collect across Manchester, Salford, Sale and Altrincham from our depot at Unit 16, Wheathill Industrial Estate, Holt Lane, Netherley, Liverpool L27 0YA. That is roughly 26 to 34 road miles each way depending on the postcode, so we are not the local option, and we would rather say so up front than hide it behind a calculator.
What you get from us is the whole kit list from one place: Athena white hotel porcelain and Kings or Harley cutlery in tens, glassware by the crate, table linen, trestles, and the heavy side of the job too. That means ovens, hobs, fryers, hot cupboards, bains marie, water boilers, fridges and outdoor cooking kit. Every item has its hire price on the site, for a 2-day hire, ex VAT. Build your list in the event planner or ring us, and you get a written quote within one working day. Nothing is charged until you accept it.
Event Equip is the trading name of Four Seasons Catering Ltd. We have hired out equipment since 2017, and the stock grew out of Four Seasons' own events. Marco, who owns the business, has more than 40 years in hospitality.
Delivery and collection to central Manchester is £198 ex VAT in the small van, or £264 if the order needs the Luton. Sale and Altrincham come in lower, £156 to £168 in the small van. Those are the actual figures from our rates, not a teaser price.
The sum is the same wherever we go. An order is two visits, one to drop off and one to collect, and each visit is charged on road miles there and back: £1.50 a mile in the Citroën Dispatch, or £2.00 a mile in the Citroën Relay Luton with a tail-lift. Each visit has a £50 minimum, and in Liverpool that minimum is what most people pay, £100 for the pair. Manchester is far enough out that the mileage takes over. At 33 miles to the city centre, one visit in the Dispatch is 66 miles at £1.50, which is £99, and two visits make £198.
The heaviest item decides the van. Crockery, cutlery, glass crates, linen and boxed tableware go in the Dispatch. Ovens, fridges, hot cupboards, bars, trestles, BBQs and hog roasts go in the Luton, and one large item puts the whole load in it. Loading, unloading and waiting are charged at £12.50 per started half hour, and parking, permits and any tolls are passed on at cost. The van runs on the motorway, the M62 or the M56 depending on which side of the city you are, and your written quote is priced on the actual route to your postcode rather than the estimate in the table. The same calculator is on our delivery page. If your event is nearer Lymm or Birchwood, the figures on our Warrington page will be lower.
Altrincham, Hale and Sale sit on the side nearest our depot, so they are the cheapest Greater Manchester drops. The city centre, Ancoats and the Northern Quarter are the furthest.
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.
It is worth it when the order is big enough that delivery is a small share of the bill, or when you want everything from one supplier. In practice that means:
On a £1,500 equipment list, £208 for Luton delivery to Altrincham adds about 14%. On a £150 list it costs more than the hire. That second case is the next question.
A small tableware order is not worth delivering from Liverpool, because our transport can cost as much as the hire itself. We would rather tell you that now than have you find out on the invoice.
Take an afternoon tea for 40 in Sale, M33:
That is £167.16 of hire, and standard cleaning is already in those prices, so nothing is added for washing up. Delivery and collection to M33 in the small van is £168, so the transport costs about the same as the equipment and doubles the bill to £335.16. On an order this size we are not the cheap way to get kit to Manchester, and if all you need is plates, cups and a few crates of glasses delivered, it is worth getting a second quote from a supplier nearer the venue.
The exception is if you can come to us. Collect from L27 0YA yourself, by appointment, and the £168 disappears. The order above then comes to £167.16 ex VAT with no transport at all.
Yes, and from Manchester it is the biggest saving available. Customer collection from Netherley, L27 0YA, is by appointment and there is no delivery charge. On a city-centre order in the small van that saves £198, and on a Luton load to Didsbury it saves £264.
A few things make it go smoothly:
Netherley is on the south-east edge of Liverpool, so coming from the Manchester side you do not have to go into the city centre. Our Liverpool page covers the districts closer to the depot.
For a sit-down wedding breakfast for 150 with a working kitchen in the marquee, the list below comes to £1,873.53 ex VAT, including Luton delivery and collection to WA14. Standard cleaning is already built into every price, so there is no washing-up line to add. Quantities are rounded up to the units we hire in: tens for crockery and cutlery, crates for glass.
Equipment hire is £1,665.53, of which £928.50 is the kitchen. Delivery and collection to WA14 is £208, because the ovens put the load in the Luton. That makes £1,873.53 ex VAT, before gas, which is charged separately, and any loading time beyond the drop itself. Deliver on the Friday and collect on the Monday, and it is normally still one hire.
The refundable deposit is 50% of the equipment hire ex VAT, which would be about £833 on this list, but it is normally capped at £500. It comes back within 7 working days of the return.
Run anything that boils water or holds food for hours on gas, and keep electric for the ovens, one per socket. The reason is the socket itself. A standard 13 amp socket on a 230 volt supply gives you about 3 kW at most. The Lincat Lynx 400 XL draws 2.5 kW, so one oven takes most of a socket on its own. Put an electric water boiler or hot cupboard on the same socket, or on an extension reel plugged into it, and you are over the limit. The fuse or breaker goes, and it tends to go just as the mains are coming out.
If the marquee runs off a single outdoor socket, that socket is one oven and nothing else. A sensible split for a garden wedding looks like this:
All our LPG equipment comes with a regulator. Gas is charged separately, and a 19 kg Calor bottle is on the list at £57.50, with a wooden cover box at £20.25 if the bottle will stand where guests walk past. Keep bottles upright and outside the marquee wall. The full range of hobs, ovens and hot cupboards is on our catering equipment page.
For a hot buffet for 100 with three hot dishes and rice, plan on four chafing dishes on the line and a hot cupboard behind it holding the refills. A 9-litre oblong chafing dish (£20.25) takes one full-size gastronorm tray, which is around 30 to 35 portions of a curry or stew at about 250 ml a serving. Each dish therefore needs filling about three times during service, and the refill trays have to be hot when they come out. That is the hot cupboard's job. A chafing dish keeps hot food hot; it will not reheat cold food.
If the queue is long, set the line double-sided, the same dishes on both sides of the table, so two people serve themselves at once. That doubles the chafing dishes to eight but roughly halves the time it takes to feed 100 people. Each dish burns one chafing gel at a time, at £1.73, so order two per dish for an evening.
Glass works the other way round: count crates, not guests. Most glasses come 24 to a crate, champagne flutes 35, and gin balloons, martini glasses and saucers 12. If nobody is washing glasses during the evening, allow about two per guest of the main drink, because people put a glass down and pick up a clean one. For 100 guests on wine and then spirits and mixers, that is 9 crates of wine glasses and 9 of hi-balls, plus 3 crates of flutes for the toast. Our sizing guide goes through quantities for other menus.
Yes. Our outdoor cooking range includes a 1.4 m hog roast machine that takes a 45 to 50 kg pig, head off, at £435.00. There are LPG BBQ griddles in 1.1 m and 1.2 m at £290.00, a 1.5 m charcoal BBQ at £217.50, and paella pans with matching ring burners. The 90 cm paella pan does about 100 portions (£40.50) and sits on the 70 cm ring burner (£50.75). The 70 cm pan does about 50 and goes on the 50 cm burner.
All of these travel in the Luton, so a BBQ order is priced at the Luton rate: £264 to Didsbury, M20, and £224 to Sale, M33. The transport cost does not rise with more kit on board, apart from loading time, so once you are paying for the Luton it makes sense to add the hot cupboard or trestles you were going to borrow from someone.
Keep open cooking screened from guests. We hire BBQ safety panels, 6 ft by 3 ft, at £33.75, plus fire blankets and extinguishers. Send us photos of where the kit will stand and the route from the van. A hog roast needs a flat, firm base, and a lawn that slopes towards the house is worth mentioning before the day.
For a private party at home, usually not, but anything public, licensed or in a park needs paperwork, and Greater Manchester is several councils with different rules. Manchester City Council covers the city centre, Didsbury, Chorlton and Fallowfield. Salford Quays and MediaCityUK come under Salford City Council. Sale, Altrincham and Hale are Trafford. Ask the council that covers the address.
Two rules apply across England:
Heaton Park is run by Manchester City Council and has its own event terms. Draft event documents are due two months before, final sign-off including the safety advisory group 28 days before, and large events can take up to six months. Open-air events elsewhere in the city need an Event Information Questionnaire two, four or six months ahead depending on size, and road closures need applying for about eight weeks ahead. Parklife fills Heaton Park for a weekend each summer, usually in June or July, and summer weekends are peak dates for us, priced higher on the quote. If your date is in that stretch, get the order in early.
Because it is further and we charge by the mile. Most Liverpool addresses fall under the £50 minimum per visit, so they pay £100 for delivery and collection. Central Manchester is about 33 miles away, which is 66 miles a visit and two visits per order: £198 in the small van or £264 in the Luton. We show that openly rather than folding it into the hire prices, and collecting from our depot yourself removes it altogether.
Yes. Delivery on a Thursday or Friday with collection on the following Monday or Tuesday is normally charged as a single 2-day hire, and the quote confirms it. It is still two van visits, so the delivery figure for your postcode applies once for the pair. For a Saturday event it means the kit is there in good time and you are not packing up on Sunday night.
The earliest you can book online is 3 days ahead, and we send a written quote within one working day. For summer weekends, bank holidays and Christmas, book well before that, because those are our peak dates and the vans and the heavy kit go first. A 25% payment secures the booking and the balance is due 7 days before handover.
Often, but send us photos first: door widths, steps, the lift, and where the van can stop. The Polar three-door counter fridge is about 1980 × 710 × 915 mm, so measure the narrowest point on the route. The Luton has a tail-lift, and we deliver, unload and collect; we do not set up or dress the room. Unloading time is £12.50 per started half hour, and any parking charge is passed on at cost.
No. Standard cleaning is already built into every hire price on the site, so there is no washing-up charge on top; only a very small order picks up the £25 minimum cleaning charge per order. What we ask is that you scrape and empty everything, pack it back in the crates, and sort glasses by type into the right racks. Kit returned mixed or loose may be charged for sorting at £18 an hour plus VAT. Keep linen dry and do not wash it.
Every LPG item comes with its regulator, and gas is charged separately. A 19 kg Calor bottle is £57.50, and we hire a wooden cover box for £20.25 and a gas spanner for £2.03. Tell us the menu and how long you will be cooking, and we will say how many bottles to order so you are not running out halfway through service.
The refundable security deposit is 50% of the equipment hire ex VAT, with a minimum of £100 and normally a maximum of £500. It comes back within 7 working days of the equipment being returned. It is separate from the 25% booking payment and the balance, and the full terms are on our hire terms page.
Yes. Event Equip grew out of Four Seasons Catering, and Four Seasons can cater an event if you want food and staff as well as the equipment. Ring 0151 230 1600 (option 2), message us on WhatsApp on 07506 232976, or email [email protected] with the date, the guest numbers and the postcode, and we will tell you what is possible.
WA1 to WA5 from £100 delivery and collection, no toll on most routes. Lymm (WA13) and Birchwood too.
WidnesWA8 from 6 miles, no toll: £100 delivery and collection in either van. Hale, Prescot and Penketh 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.
