Restaurant, hotel, hospital, institutional, and corporate kitchens require organization, storage, and lots of specialized equipment. Commercial kitchen designers, chefs, food and beverage managers, and purchasing specialists must select appliances, maintenance equipment, and cooking equipment that will work efficiently in the available space. Learning about the four categories of commercial kitchen equipment will help you create a comprehensive checklist.

Food Storage

Most commercial kitchens require a variety of storage options to keep ingredients fresh until they are used. Categories include storage for fresh ingredients, frozen foods, and dry ingredients.

The size and capacity of food storage equipment depend on the volume of food the kitchen produces and the amount of inventory it must maintain. A small restaurant or pizzeria will not need the massive walk-in refrigerators and freezers that a large hotel kitchen requires. You should also consider energy efficiency and how easy the equipment is to clean in addition to size and capacity.

Dry goods must have storage that protects them from infestation, moisture, and contamination. Covered plastic bins, storage shelves away from sources of water, and racks sturdy enough to hold non-perishable inventory all go on the checklist.

Some food storage must be close to food prep and cooking stations. When prep staff chops vegetables for salads, small refrigerators under worktables can keep them fresh until they are needed for salads or stir fry. In addition, you must shelve spices and seasonings within reach of cooking stations.

Mini fridges keep eggs, cream, and prepped meats at the ready until they are tossed into the pot or pan. Chefs will decide how they want to keep ingredients ready and how they want to organize their “mise en place,” but they’ll need a variety of cruets, small stainless steel pans, and ceramic ramekins to arrange pre-measured ingredients.

Commercial kitchen equipment in all four categories endures heavy use. Many kitchens keep backups for slicers, grinders, or dough sheeters if the kitchen cannot function without them. These need to be ready to go at a moment’s notice, so they require storage and covers to keep them clean.

Food Preparation

The food preparation category includes all the equipment needed to turn ingredients into dishes and meals. Mixers, bowls, spoons, whisks, knives, shredders, scales, measuring cups, scoops, sifters, slicers, processors, and blenders all fall under food preparation. Bakeries, pizzerias, or kitchens renowned for their dinner rolls need a commercial dough roller and possibly a dough proofer. Steak houses and burger joints require meat tenderizers and meat grinders.

Some kitchens will use large floor mixers with built-in mechanisms to lift bowls for emptying, while others can get away with stand mixers. Specialized kitchens may need tortillas presses, spiralizers, or pasta makers.

Prep requires work tables, sinks with sprayers to clean produce, and garbage disposals to grind up the debris that ends up in the sinks. Some kitchens use specialty equipment like milkshake mixers, and nearly every kitchen needs coffee makers, soda dispensers, and ice machines.

Cooking

The big-ticket items are ovens and ranges. Decisions depend on what food the kitchen cooks. Some commercial kitchens will need a full array of ovens, including rack ovens, convection ovens, microwaves, rotisseries, tunnel ovens, and maybe a pizza oven. Some fast-food restaurants use conveyer style ovens, where food travels through the oven and comes out fully cooked.

Steamers, fryers, toasters, grills, and griddles may be necessary to prepare the menu items offered by the restaurant. For this, it is important to consider available power sources and energy efficiency. Kitchens and individual equipment might use electricity, gas, or a combination of both.

Menus change regularly, so it is best to prepare with cooking equipment that can handle expansion into new cuisines. Woks, sauté pans, stockpots, and slow cookers may find their place in your kitchen.

Small equipment is just as important as the heavy hitters; cooks need these crucial tools. They may need spoons, tongs, ladles, spatulas and grill bricks to flatten burgers, and racks or hooks to hang pots. Cooks need personal protective equipment (PPE) too, like insulated potholders and heat resistant aprons, plus a place to put them when not in use.

In busy kitchens that turn a lot of tables, warmers keep food hot until runners can get it out the door. Some kitchens may require heat lamps or steam tables. Bakeries need cooling racks and separate refrigeration for completed cakes and pastries.

Maintenance and Miscellaneous

Commercial kitchens spend as much time cleaning as they do cooking. Hotel and restaurant kitchens use large capacity dishwashers that clean at higher temperatures than residential machines. Dishes must dry too, and dish warmers can do the job in a more sanitary way than drying dishes by hand with a cloth.

Kitchens should set aside a separate storage area for cleaning supplies. It should be big enough to stow away buckets, mops, and detergents used to clean floors, and food-safe cleaners for stainless steel work surfaces.

Modern kitchens depend more and more on technology. Some waitstaff can transmit orders using tablets, and the orders can be displayed on screens in the kitchen.

Television monitors do not come immediately to mind as standard commercial kitchen equipment, but they are becoming increasingly necessary, along with good Wi-Fi connections and restaurant management software. When your waitstaff enters orders, these systems keep track of the impact on inventory and help calculate the popularity (or lack thereof) of menu items.

Sanitation and health concerns mean that for the foreseeable future, face masks will join food prep gloves as necessary commercial kitchen equipment. More people are paying attention to ventilation systems, not only for steam and smoke, but also for circulating and filtering air to decrease the risk of spreading infection.

Health and safety codes will dictate the number of sinks and fire extinguishers required for the kitchen, and possibly define where these items must be located. Non-skid floor mats and supplies for handwashing stations also fall under the maintenance category.

When selecting equipment for a commercial kitchen, involve the staff who will use the equipment. Their experience is vital in choosing what the kitchen needs versus what gets in the way. Cost, efficiency, and durability are all factors, as are size, capacity, ease of cleaning, and complexity. Exercise caution with the latest bells and whistles—equipment is useless if it is so complicated that no one can figure out how to use it.