Whether you’re opening a new restaurant or renovating your old one, your idea is to build and use a commercial kitchen with top-notch commercial kitchen equipment for at least the next 10 years, right?
Building a new commercial kitchen and buying new equipment is very expensive, so be sure to get all the information about design standards for food and food equipment over the next decade to be able to keep up with low standards and build a commercial kitchen that delivers the most production efficiency.
Make the Right Choice at the Right Time
Production efficiency is related to the production of goods and services with the optimal combination of inputs to obtain maximum output at minimum cost.
In order to be productively efficient, your restaurant kitchen needs to be productive at its production possibilities frontier.
If you consider that commercial kitchens are high energy consumers, consuming roughly 2.5 times more energy per square foot than any other commercial space, plus 40% is used for food preparation and storage, you can easily conclude that most of the unused energy is scattered in the kitchen.
The new technology has made a drastic reduction in energy consumption, resulting in significant cost savings.
Energy and Labor Efficiency can give your Operation an Edge
Restaurant owners who invest money strategically can cut energy costs between 10%-30%. With professional kitchen design software and consulting services, energy savings can be as high as 40%, equating to 3%-6% running costs.
The most cost effective way to adopt is professional catering equipment plans produced for the needs of the restaurant.
The real problem in commercial kitchens is equipment that is often only 50% efficient.
This is exactly what has actually happened when low cost of capital drives equipment selection with little consideration for life cycle costs in general. You must be aware of these facts and not make these kinds of mistakes.
When investing in new equipment, calculate the sum of all recurring and one-off costs over the life of the product.
Don’t forget to include factors such as energy usage, idle speed, warm-up energy consumption, hours of operation per day, production capacity, and maintenance costs.
Understand Design Standards for Food Processing Equipment
It is very important that you check your country’s laws and regulations regarding food handling and food storage equipment.
If your restaurant is located in Europe, you must ensure that your commercial kitchen equipment is in accordance with European CEN standards, which provide a safety design requirement for food processing machines.
Currently, the most trusted in food safety is NSF International. The NSF has led the development of over 75 standards and protocols for food sanitation equipment and has certified thousands of products as safe to use in restaurant and commercial kitchen settings.
NSF food equipment standards include requirements for material safety, design, construction and product performance.
Standards are made to establish minimum requirements: definitions, material characteristics, design parameters, construction details, and equipment performance required for light cleaning, food protection, and elimination of harborages.
If there is a published standard relevant to the car you are buying, this should be stated in the sales contract.
Tips for Improving Your Efficiency with New Commercial Kitchen Equipment
Whether you are buying equipment for a new kitchen or replacement parts, you need more information about catering equipment that will speed up the flow of your restaurant kitchen and take your profits to the next level.
In case you are retrofitting old equipment parts and high performance accessories consider constant auditing and monitoring which will give you insight into the parts of the equipment that need to be replaced.
Regularly record your kitchen energy consumption and set targets for reduction.
Induction Cookers. If you decide to use a cooker, don’t forget to buy Induction.
It is up to 50% more efficient than a traditional electric stove because it only works when the pan is in direct contact with the electromagnetic field generated by its electric coil.
Induction hobs provide significant energy savings and keep your kitchen cooler so you’ll also cut money on ventilation energy costs.
A kitchen ventilation system is one of the biggest energy consumers in a kitchen, often because it runs at full capacity even during downtime to control humidity, which can lead to mold growth and structural damage.
Steamboats Highly efficient. Boiler steamers based on the old style are history. Average old steamer using 40 gallons of water an hour.
New models of high-efficiency steamers operate without a boiler or drain so only consume one or two gallons of water per hour. High-efficiency steamers use far less energy and water.
With improved insulation, heat loss has been reduced so it provides a more efficient vapor delivery system.
Grills Highly efficiently switches itself on only when activated foods are placed under a heat source and heated for a few seconds with its infrared elements.
New age fryers are much more efficient. They got an advanced burner and heat exchanger design.
The insulated pans retain heat, so they offer faster cooking times and faster temperature recovery times. In addition, they require much less oil in the cooking process.
Advanced technology offers an intelligent filtration system that extends the life of used oil by tracking frying statistics and alerting operators when the filter needs to be changed.
Combination ovens can cut energy costs by about 50% because they offer faster cooking with convection, steam and combination cooking, watch out for automatic fan shutdowns when you open the door and triple-glazed viewing windows that save up to 40% energy
The new generation of dishwashers has many energy saving features.
Choose one with a heat recovery condenser device to reuse waste hot water to heat the incoming water supply.
The newer models have more efficient rinse pumps and better water filtration technology that consumes less energy while improving washing.
lighting. Use state-of-the-art sensors, including PIR, passive infrared, which can detect movement within a range of 12 meters.
This is only a brief overview of some of the features of the latest commercial kitchen equipment.
Whether you are purchasing equipment for a new commercial kitchen or renovating your old restaurant kitchen, hiring a commercial kitchen designer, energy consultant, and installation team is recommended.