Recharge is the apt name for the first staff canteen at Northvolt Ett. The plan is to open two more in the future.
It has been a year since the multi-national catering company Compass Group revealed that a contract had been signed with Northvolt for restaurants, café, catering and coffee and food vending machines. The restaurants are now open in both Skellefteå and Västerås with similar concepts.
André Hådén is pleased with the reception of the staff canteen which is located in the factory area of Northvolt Ett. His culinary history includes working in several of Skellefteå’s more high-profile restaurants.
”We get quite a lot of input from our customers”, says André Hådén, site manager at Recharge which is the staff canteen at Northvolt Ett.
– This was a blank slate with lots of new things to build up. Those kinds of challenges are fun, he says.
At Recharge, which is on its way to employ eight people, there are 260 seats for the restaurant’s visitors and 50 seats in a ”microwave kitchen” for those bringing their own food. When Norran visits there is quite a lot of movement in the restaurant even though lunch does not start for another hour.
Site manager André Hådén (left) talks to chef Pernilla Andersson and kitchen manager Johnny Johansson. There are already ideas about how the operations at Recharge may be developed.
– We also see that many people choose to meet here in connection with shift change between six and seven in the morning. We hadn’t understood that there could be that much activity here at that time, Hådén says.
The restaurant is open for three hours over lunch and offers what they call a deli buffet and street food with South American and Asian flavours. Northvolt Ett is entirely unique in Skellefteå in that staff from over 80 countries work there which means there are plenty of expectations and requests.
What street food may look like at Recharge. The lunch offer also includes a buffet.
– We have a good concept but of course there could be culture clashes. On the street food side of the restaurant, we do a theme each week, says Hådén.
There is also an increasing number of vending machines spread out over Northvolt’s site, Market 24/7, that make meals, sandwiches, snacks, sweets and other things available at all times.
Vending machines are now being installed in various locations throughout Northvolt Ett where more than 1,800 people from over 80 countries are currently employed.
– We see that we will need a person working full-time looking after them going forward, says Hådén.
The food carts at Northvolt Ett, which there are currently seven of, will continue to be available in the area as they are seen as a good supplement to Recharge.
Other news at Northvolt Ett regards the head office which was first planned to be located outside the fence by the new street, Voltvägen. This plan has now changed.
– The head office will be built inside the area and located near production. The previous layout of the installation site didn’t have room for it but after a re-design it’ll be possible, says Sanna Bäckström, communications manager at Northvolt Ett.