Burkett Installs 4 Kitchens Inside the New Amazon Air Hub
Last updated on May 21st, 2024 at 10:57 am
In August 2021, Burkett Restaurant Equipment & Supplies was awarded the Amazon Air project located in Hebron Kentucky, where three full kitchens, a grab-n-go kitchen, and four serving areas have recently been installed.
While the rest of the airport was completed and opened for operations in August 2021, the kitchens and serving areas are scheduled to open in early August 2022. The kitchen staff and operations will be managed by AVI Foodsystems, a leader in the hospitality provider industry with Jeff Day, AVI’s General Manager leading the team.
Burkett Concepts is your industry-trained design team at Burkett Restaurant Equipment & Supplies. We provide custom foodservice design solutions, project management, installation, personalized service, and continued support.
For more information about Burkett Concepts, visit our website!
What is Amazon Air?
Amazon Air, not to be confused with Amazon Prime Air (drone delivery service), has a new, state-of-the-art principal sorting facility located in Hebron Kentucky. The 800,000 square-foot Amazon Air Hub is located at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport on 600 acres of land. The facility operates dozens of flights per day and processes millions of packages every week to quickly connect Amazon customers across the country. The facility will employ over 2,000 individuals and will feature 100 daily flights at full capacity. View the facilities progress video here!
“The primary function of Amazon Air is to transport Amazon packages from distant fulfillment centers that are outside of Amazon’s local ground linehaul network for a specific area. Once the buyer’s order is flown from the distant fulfillment center to the buyer’s region, it is either transported to the regional Amazon Sortation Center for last-mile delivery either by Amazon Logistics or the United States Postal Service, or directly to the local Amazon Delivery Station for last-mile delivery by Amazon Logistics”
–Wikipedia
Partnerships in the Project
“What an honor it is to have been awarded this world-class project! The final walk-thru and tour of the entire facility was fascinating. I am incredibly proud of our team here at Burkett Restaurant Equipment & Supplies for executing this project. This could not have been done without an amazing team of partners who made this all so seamless.” -Jameel Burkett, CEO of Burkett Restaurant Equipment & Supplies
Completing a project this large requires great partnerships! As mentioned earlier, AVI Foodsystems was a major part of the project and working with Jeff, their general manager, was a pleasure. “Burkett has been fantastic throughout this install. Even when minor problems have come up, Matt & the Burkett team have responded quickly & attended to issues as they arise. A big thanks to Burkett for all of their hard work in helping to get this facility operationally sound & ready to open for business!” – Jeff Day, AVI General Manager.
Another major partner in the project was our friends at Zink Foodservice. Zink Foodservice is a manufacturer’s representative for foodservice equipment. They work closely with dealers (like Burkett), consultants, and operators to provide custom solutions for premier equipment, tabletop, and smallwares manufacturers.
Why Zink Foodservice was a Part of this Project
“With a lot of moving parts and a job of this size I worked closely with the Burkett team to ensure what the customer wanted is exactly what they received. I worked hand-in-hand with the estimating and project management team at Burkett to ensure all equipment on the project matched both the specifications and the drawings while working closely with our manufacturers to ensure they had all of the information they needed to complete the project.”
– Travis Lusky, Zink Foodservice, Territory Manager
What’s Inside the 4 Kitchens?
Sorting Facility, 2 Kitchens : “Prime One” & “Prime Two”
Inside the sorting facility are two kitchens and serving areas; Prime One and Prime Two. The two kitchens are expected to provide foodservice for 2,400 employees. When you first enter the serving areas of both locations, you’ll see timeless pieces of Delfield equipment that include point of sale counters and a self-serving area that includes soup bars, salad bars, and beverage counters.
The serving areas inside both kitchens include hot entre counters, Federal Industries Refrigerated Deli Display Cases for pre-made sandwiches, grill and fry pick up stations, grill and fry stations, Lincoln pizza conveyor ovens and refrigerated/heated roll-in boxes for storing prepped foods.
Prime One
Beyond the double doors of the Prime One Kitchen is an impressively large kitchen where a variety of offerings from soup & salad to pizza, burgers & fresh daily entree selections will be prepared for the Amazon employees. Cooking Equipment includes Fry Master deep fryers, Garland cooking battery that includes heavy duty ranges with a char broiler and griddle. There’s a Cleveland Tilt Kettle & Tile Skillet, and Convotherm Combi-Oven (8 featured throughout the entire project).
This Convotherm Combi Oven / Steamer with steam generator and the EasyTouch complete package gives you a full range of impressive and practical features while also being Energy Star certified! Features include a high-resolution 9″ full-touch screen and customization options for your every need. The operating concept is incredibly easy, incorporating both established and new functions. It also features a multi-point core temperature probe, five-speed auto reversing fan, anti-microbial hygienic door handle, pull-out spray hose, ConvoClean+ fully automatic hands-free cleaning system, and durable stainless-steel construction. This workhorse can fit up to six 18″ x 26″ full size sheet pans or 12 12″ x 20″ x 1″ hotel pans.
Inside the warewashing section of Prime One kitchen is an impressive piece of equipment, a Jackson Warewashing Systems Flight-Type Dishmachine. This substantial piece of equipment goes the extra mile with dishwashing by cleaning nearly 15,000 dishes per hour using only 50 gallons of water an hour. To top off the superior function of this machine, it’s also Energy Star Certified! You will see this piece of equipment also featured in the third kitchen inside the Air Ramp Facility.
Prime Two
The second kitchen, Prime Two, also sits inside the sorting facility with a mirrored floorplan and slightly less cooking equipment. The intention of the Prime Two kitchen is to serve a fresh and healthier fare, including a made to order fusion station, with the bulk of any needed cooked food being transported from the Prime One Kitchen.
Both Sorting Facility Kitchens
Both of the kitchens inside of the sorting facility have custom Kolpak combination walk-in coolers (dairy cooler) /freezer. The Dairy Cooler features glass doors that will eliminate the need to open the door as frequent as possible and to leave the door open for shorter periods, all great for energy and food saving purposes. There is a large dry storage area with shelving units by John Boos. John Boos also provided custom fabrication worktables and compartment sinks that allows for seamless workspaces.
Air Ramp Facility : GSE Cafe
The third kitchen sits inside the Amazon Air Ramp Facility and is expected to provide foodservice for 500 employees. This kitchen, including the servery, warewashing and storing sections are a close replica of the Prime 1 Kitchen inside the sorting facility mentioned earlier, only slightly smaller.
Pilot’s Lounge Cafe, A Grab-N-Go Kitchen
The fourth kitchen is considered a grab-n-go style kitchen that is mainly serving the airport’s pilots. The Pilots Lounge Café plans to serve a daily entree selection & Boar’s Head Deli menu. The featured equipment includes Delfield custom hot/cold food serving counter with point of sale, Federal Industries Refrigerated Deli Display Cases for pre-made sandwiches, and a beverage counter.
One of the types of equipment located in this kitchen is the Alto-Shaam Halo Heat Double Deck Electric Cook & Hold Ovens. These ovens will actually be used to keep food warm on the planes themselves.
This oven uses Halo Heat technology to control and uniformly cook the food items to improve on overall food quality while cutting down on food waste. Using the cook by probe method ensures that the oven will read the internal product temperature and automatically switch over to hold when the optimal temperature is achieved. Eight programmable menu buttons provide the ability to cut labor costs down by cooking over night with the set and forget controls. Cooking multiple items at once and in different styles is possible as the two compartments are able to be independently controlled. Catching any mess is made simple with the front mounted drip pan.
Project Manager, Matt Calvelage
“As Burkett’s Senior Project Manager, I facilitate the communication with internal and external teams to ensure the project is completed on time, under budget, and to the customer’s expectations.
I am responsible for successfully initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, controlling and closing the project.
The Amazon Air Hub has been an exciting and challenging project to be a part of. I’m proud of the Burkett team and all of our partners for how we’ve come together to complete such an impressive project!”
-Matt Calvelage, Burkett Senior Project Manager.
