10 restaurant equipment that your professional kitchen needs
The kitchen is the heart of your restaurant and the three most important aspects of food-based restaurant activity happen in this space:
- preparation/cooking
- plating
- moving to the service area
Restaurant-kitchen designs are completely focused on functionality. Decorative elements, trendy materials or personalized touches are not needed here.
These items of restaurant equipment are essential for the smooth functioning of your kitchen:
Counters/work-tops: These form the work-area and they must be sturdy, durable and low-maintenance. Steel is the preferred material in most restaurant kitchens, because it is rust/stain-resistant, easy to clean, and takes heavy loads/impact.
Refrigerators/freezers: These include walk-in/reach-in coolers, restaurant-freezers, commercial refrigerators for food-preservation/freshness, preparing cold items like salads, desserts and storing daily-use basics.
Automatic slicers/slicer machinery: These are used for cutting meat/vegetables. They provide easy, quick, efficient, consistent cutting.
Ovens/ranges/cookers: Commercial ovens using gas/electricity, microwave-ovens, wood-burning stoves for specialist cuisines, fryers and warmers are other important equipment to have.
Mixers/blenders: Industrial mixers and blenders are must-have restaurant equipment to make your own sauces and salad dressings and/or serve baked goods and desserts. Multi-purpose equipment like food-processors is ideal to knead pizza or bread dough, blending, juicing and pureeing fruit and vegetables. Batch-bowl types can gather food as it gets processed, heavy-duty choppers can handle huge volumes of fruit/vegetables and continuous-feed types are necessary when speed and large volumes are involved. Stick-type mixers are a good option for salad dressings/desserts. Planetary-mixers are perfect for mashing potatoes, whipping cream, mixing cake dough, etc.
Sink/dishwasher: Kitchen sinks are a vital piece of equipment in the restaurant work-space, where you need running water for washing, cleaning, draining, etc. Apart from separate sinks for washing meats, vegetables, and fruits, you need water for cleaning. Industrial dishwashers are the norm in large kitchens. They’re space-saving, convenient and efficient, for large volumes of utensils, compared to traditional methods of washing dishes at the sink.
Safety equipment: Restaurant fires are notorious for the destruction and hazards they pose to life and property. Invest in top-quality fire-extinguishers that can handle various types of fires including electrical, gas, etc.
Utensils: These are based on the type of cuisine served and the cooking processes required. They include the kitchen-set used for food-preparation/storage and the serving-set for the restaurant.
Waste-management: Trash-cans, drainage, waste-disposal units, regular supply of garbage-bags etc., are essential kitchen restaurant equipment.
Cleaning products: Use of eco-friendly, food-safe cleaning products, detergents, wipes and regular pest-control keep your kitchen squeaky-clean, pest-free and hygienic.
