Freeze frames

Thirsty customers are not the only people who appreciate ice in drinks. Ice is a good friend to the profitability of bar operations, helping to bulk out drinks, usually at a very low cost.

But rather than being thought of as profit generators, ice-makers are often seen as a necessary evil, demanding space, water, electricity and more than their share of breakdown call-outs.

However, Continental-style café chain Aroma started using ice-makers to generate extra revenue when hot weather hit London last month. Several branches introduced iced coffee to their espresso range.

Outlets already had small ice-makers for chilling canned soft drinks, but can sales are low and the ice-makers were under-used. The combination of freshly made espresso and ice-cubes on a hot day produced drinks that sold for up to £2.20 a serving.

Staff put ice-cubes into a café latte glass and pour a fresh double espresso from the brewer directly over the cubes. The coffee chills within a minute, yet the ice doesn't melt, preserving the coffee's strength and intense flavour.

As part of Aroma's "Cool It!" promotion, other iced coffees include a shot of espresso over ice topped up with chilled milk, and iced café mocha, which has chocolate syrup added as well as cold milk.

Vodka booster

Ice plays a significant role on the drinks menu at Tsar's bar, at London's five-star Langham Hilton, which specialises in vodka and Champagne. Ice is inevitably a key requirement for Champagne buckets, but it becomes crucial in the serving of Tsar's 80-strong choice of vodkas, sourced from 10 countries.

Vodka is poured in 50ml shots into a glass resting inside a larger glass of crushed ice. The distinctive presentation is an elegant way of providing a drink that is enjoyed "the colder the better".

The ice comes to the bar from one of the hotel's ice-makers and is used in cubelet form in the Champagne buckets. For the vodka, batches of the ice are put through a small bar-top Dualit ice-crusher, which combines a small hopper with a powered grinding mechanism.

The hotel also makes presentational use of ice elsewhere, such as the regular Friday Fish and jazz evenings held in the main restaurant, Memories, where crushed ice is used in the seafood display.

The Langham Hilton has two ice-makers. A five-year-old Scotsman machine produces nugget-style ice, while a Hoshizaki, introduced this year in the room service kitchen, makes ice in a flatter, "pillow" shape.

Is there is a difference in use of the two shapes? Not according to the guests, says Langham Hilton's chief engineer Eric Matthews, who argues that as long as it's cold, the typical guest does not mind what the ice looks like. But he believes that the pillow-shaped cubes fit the Champagne buckets better, leaving less air between the chunks.

His main concern with ice-makers is keeping them going. "Ice is a hellishly important thing if you run out of it," says Matthews. In his experience, the most crucial factor in keeping the machines running properly is to place them in a reasonably well-ventilated area, since restricted air flow can impede output.

Staff abuse is another problem. Matthews has to discourage waiting staff from such practices as leaving heavy objects on cabinets - the top of the Scotsman is already badly buckled because of this - and using forks and other sharp implements to deal with ice-bin blockages.

Shapes

While the range of machines available to UK caterers offers many shapes and sizes of ice, reliability is the primary preoccupation for users, along with price. But the appearance of the "cubes" (something of a misnomer since so many machines produce round chunks) attracts some attention.

"We like to see uniformity in the ice produced, and as smooth a surface as possible," says John Metcalf, operations director for the PizzaExpress chain. Its preference is for a round or oval shape rather than a block with sharp edges. A spray-type machine, typically a Foster or Porkka, is preferred for the way it produces thimble-shaped cubes of high clarity.

Pub ice

Mark Brown, purchasing manager for Bass Taverns, thinks ice needs to look as "authentic" as possible. He questions whether spheres with holes in the middle meet this need. "We prefer chunky pieces, closer to those people use at home."

With all of the 2,700 Bass-managed houses now using an ice-maker, reliability and a compact size are key considerations. "Unless it is a new-build pub, we can't always fit the ice-maker in the bar itself where staff can get straight at the ice," says Brown. The cellar tends to be a usual site, but this can pose problems - the ice-maker can get too cold, leading the machine's control system to think the external temperature is its internal temperature and stop operating.