The quick-serve restaurant business is booming, and that has many interested in becoming part of it themselves. Chains that make sure every location has the equipment it needs to succeed tend to rise to the top of local, regional, and national markets.
There are some sorts of assets that are particularly critical to quick-serve restaurants, regardless of the type of food they offer. The seven kinds of equipment that follow should always be considered especially important for quick-serve restaurant chains.
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Stainless Steel Sinks
Cleanliness is one key to food safety, and quick-serve restaurants need to do everything possible to facilitate it. No part of a restaurant’s kitchen is more central to the cause of cleanliness than an appropriately designed sink.
Companies like the one online at aeromfg.com produce sinks that suit the needs of quick-serve restaurants very well. Using stainless steel ensures that a sink will not collect potentially dangerous contaminants and will be easy to keep clean.
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Warming Ovens
Quick-serve restaurants vary widely with how they approach the important subject of food preparation. Even restaurants that mostly turn raw, unprocessed ingredients into finished dishes will typically need to do some warming along the way.
The quick-service model almost always depends on being able to heat up portions or sauces that have been stored frozen or refrigerated. Just like the drawers found under many consumer-grade ranges, warming ovens meant for commercial use can be more than merely handy.
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Fryers
Even quick-serve restaurants that make a particular point of offering healthful dishes will often feature some fried selections. The quality of a restaurant’s fryers will impact everything from the tastiness of its food to the amount of labor required to keep them running well. A low-grade fryer can drag a restaurant down more than almost any other piece of equipment.
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Steam Tables
The point of every quick-serve restaurant is to be able to provide delicious meals without delay. That often requires preparing portions ahead of time and keeping them ready for service.
The best way to fill in the gap between preparation and plating is often to hold ingredients or complete dishes at temperature. Steam tables that make this easy keep things moving along as desired.
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Food Preparation Tables
Even chains that provide food to locations in essentially ready-to-serve forms will always have some need for preparation space. Strong, sturdy tables that are easy to keep clean will streamline and regularize operations in almost every case. Most often made of stainless steel today, food prep tables provide invaluable support for back-of-house activities in most quick-serve restaurants.
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Combination Ovens
Although they are available to consumers, so-called “combi” ovens are most often found in restaurants. That these compact units can cook food via convection, steam, or both at once makes them especially versatile. It also makes them perfectly suited to many quick-service operations, where speed and flexibility are often prized.
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Speed Racks
Designed to accommodate dozens of sheet pans at once, rolling speed racks are essential to many quick-serve restaurants. Whether they are filling the floor of a walk-in refrigerator or lining the walls of a kitchen, speed racks keep things organized in compact fashion.
A Well-Equipped Quick-Serve Restaurant
While there are dozens of other types of equipment that will normally be needed, the seven above often prove most critical to the success of quick-serve restaurants. Fortunately, high-quality options of all these types are now easy to come by.
