3 Tips: Make the Best Decisions When Buying Catering Equipment for Your Restaurant

Running a restaurant is fraught with difficulties. Wouldn't it be so much better if we could have a list of tips and tricks for each different facet of restaurant management? Well, you can, but you have to do your research and collect these tips yourself.

Here, we have made your life somewhat easier, by providing you with a list of tips for buying catering equipment. These tips will help to make the most of you money and do the best for your restaurant.

Tip 1: Choose the Same Brand

When buying equipment from commercial catering equipment suppliers, it is always better to stick to the same brand. There are several reasons for this:

1.You're more likely to receive a discount from the manufacturer
2.You only need to contact one manufacture/supplier in order to have all the items fixed/serviced
3.It looks better
4.Because they work in a similar manner, there is less need for training.

Tip 2: Choose Quality over Cost

Initially, one item might appear much more cost effective than another might. Often, a cheaper item is more attractive to the buyer, simply because it saves money. However, it is a false economy. Remember the adage “buy cheap pay twice”.

Choosing quality products often saves you money in the long term. The last longer, they use less electricity/gas (because they often have a higher efficiency rating), and they perform their tasks better. All of these things improve the profitability of your kitchen.

Tip 3: Choose One Supplier and Stick with Them

By choosing a single supplier, you confer yourself with many benefits, including:

•Better prices – they will reward loyalty
•Better expertise – they will spend longer with their loyal customers
•Fast response rates – they will want to keep you happy, because they need your custom. This means that they will come out and fix the equipment quickly, and that they will replace any items as soon as they can.

It is important to choose good commercial catering equipment suppliers to take advantage of the above three bullet points, so do test a few of them out before settling on a single supplier.

If you would like to know more visit Garnersfse.

Smooth Flow Of The Commercial Kitchen

If your kitchen is looking tired and in need of some work there’s a great deal of pleasure, if you can afford it, to refurbish the whole room.

There are some beautiful as well as practical kitchens available through a number of specialist design companies. And the new kitchen can transform your home.

But there are obvious differences between a new home kitchen and a large commercial kitchen. And most kitchen design companies are either in one camp or the other and rarely operating in both sectors.

In the domestic kitchen the only often repeated design tip is the triangle proximity of fridge, cooker and sink. Perhaps the fourth should be a work top near all these three components. These are the most visited spots in the kitchen and having them near each other should cut down on walking.

On the other hand, commercial catering equipment services stress the importance of flow and usually consists of 5 specific areas linked one after the other.

The first area is the storage that is near the goods in area. This is usually situated near the cleaning area of sinks, washing machines and drying racks.  This is often one of the busiest parts of the kitchen.

The next essential area is the food preparation location that follows on from the storage of ingredients and cleaned pots, pans and dishes as well as all the other usual utensils.

Then in the heart of the kitchen is the island containing everything needed to cook the food. This will include ovens, ranges, griddles and fryers. Above will be exhaust systems and the whole island allows for chefs to work either side of it without getting in each other’s way.

In all commercial kitchen planning the trick is to create both space and yet intimacy as all the various chefs must work as a team. It’s not always easy for this to occur and we all know of stories about chefs and waiters shouting at each other or even flinging plates.

Equiped To Produce Fine Food

Maybe it’s because people are leading busier lives than generations before but if you look at a city like London a huge number of professionals eat out during the weekday evenings.

Planning Your Business Effectively

Starting your own business is an incredibly exciting time, especially if it is an avenue that you are passionate about, however the preliminary stages can be quite daunting as there is a lot of information that needs to be documented before anything else happens. There will need to be a formal business plan presented to the bank and/or councils to acquire the funds and licenses so, to ensure that you have everything you need, this guide aims to provide a brief overview of what needs to be included.

Executive Summary

This is the very first part of your business plan and will include what your vision is for your business, for example, if you have a coffee shop design in mind, this is where you would explain your reasons for opening a coffee shop at the premises you have chosen. It is a good idea to state if there is a specific area of interest near your chosen site, for example, a shopping district or a college or university which will allow repeat custom; you will go into this in more detail later in the plan but it is a good tactic to mention it briefly at the beginning of your plan. In this summary, include the site size, the length of the lease, start up funds and how the remaining capital is going to be funded and how you expect your company to grow in the next 3 years in revenue and net profit.

After the brief opening statement, state a minimum of three key objectives that you wish to achieve in your first year of your business along with a list of how you are going to achieve those objectives, i.e turn profits in the first month by maximising sales through aesthetics and marketing strategies.

Products

This section is incredibly important as it is the very crux of your business - the products that will bring in your revenue and build your profits. So, if you are looking to begin a cafe business, you menu would be in this section along with a list of ingredients that will be needed and any merchandise that will also be sold on site. It  is essential that you go into depth about your products, including how to prepare them, for example, if you are looking to open a coffee shop, explaining how the temperature of the milk is important to making the perfect latte shows that you are serious about the business idea because you have done extensive research.

Competition

Knowing and understanding your competition is what makes a business successful. As a business owner, it is important to display in your business plan your awareness of other similar businesses around you but also what gives your business the edge over them. If you are a small coffee shop in the same vicinity as Costa, what gives you the edge over this well-established coffee house? Why would customers rather come to you? Tackling these obstacles is important as it shows that you have considered all angles to make your business a set above the rest.

How the Right Catering Equipment Can Save Your Restaurant Thousands

Restaurants tend to be inefficient in terms of their energy use. They frequently use more energy than is necessary, and this reflects in the cost of their gas and electric bills. Consequently, they have raised overheads and a reduced net profit.

Fortunately, you can buy commercial catering equipment that will help to save the restaurant money. Installing the below mentioned equipment, could save you as much as £10 a day. Over the course of a year, this amounts to savings of £3650, not bad.

•Induction cookers: ask your commercial catering equipment services supplier if they can replace your existing cookers with induction cookers. These are the most energy efficient on the market, so well worth the cost in the long run.

•Freezer and fridge draws: when you open a traditional freezer or fridge, you let out a lot of the cold air and allow the heat in. This means that the equipment needs to work harder to return to base temperature. If you are constantly opening and closing the fridge and freezers, this equates to a lot of lost energy. Instead, you should choose equipment that allows you to open one section at a time, for example, freezers that have separate door compartments. It is a well-established technique, within the catering industry, to use such a piece of equipment.

•Programmable equipment: rather than using equipment that you manually change each time that you do something different, you can choose programmable equipment. This enables you to use the item solely for the job, and not to leave it running while it is redundant.

•On-demand boilers: these are far more efficient than older style combination heaters. They allow you to use energy only when required, rather than maintaining a constant temperature.

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Commercial Kitchens: Choosing the Right Equipment

When it comes to buying equipment for your commercial restaurant, it’s important that you make the right decisions. The wrong decisions at this stage can prove extremely costly. Don’t worry, though, because there is a method involved. Below, you will find the various steps involved in choosing the correct type of equipment for your kitchen.

Step 1 Suitability:

The first thing you need to think about is the type of task that you need to commercial kitchen equipment to do. This might sound obvious, but when it comes to commercial kitchen equipment, it isn’t as simple as it sounds. Take an oven. In your home, your oven will probably only have one or two settings, e.g. grill and fan-assisted. However, a commercial oven will perform many more roles. Before you choose your equipment, sit down and work out what food you are going to be cooking, and the best way in which to cook this food.

Step 2 Reliability:

Once you have established which type of equipment you need, you will now need to choose a manufacture that makes reliable equipment. If you have any past experience with a supplier, then you can think about how they performed in the past. Was the equipment reliable? Did it require frequent maintenance? Did it have parts that needed replacing often?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions, then use the internet to search for a good brand. You need to take a holistic approach and find opinions from many sources, not just from the manufactures own sites or reviews.

Step 3 Budget:

Now, you can start to think about budget. Can you afford the item that you need? If not, it may be worth trying to source second hand equipment. Alternatively, you may be able to come to an arrangement with the manufacture/supplier. If not, you could choose a smaller size, or opt for a similar item from another supplier.

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Creative Catering In The Perfect Kitchen

There are several Victorian stately homes owned by the National Trust and open to the public that have re-created a kitchen as it would have looked during that era.

All the implements that were used are there and it all comes to several hundred pieces with some that even today nobody has a clue as to their use. These were kitchens that would cater for a family of a dozen or so but also feed weekend parties of perhaps a hundred.

The kitchen was designed around a central table for preparation and a large open fire to cook over with a big walk-in pantry as well as other storage.

Modern catering kitchen design also needs plenty of preparation and storage facilities but certainly no open fire as electricity and gas have made cooking so much easier and quicker.

Garners have been designing and building commercial kitchens as well as serving areas and all other restaurant areas for decades and bring that experience to help design new establishments as well as refurbishing old ones.

The type of restaurant has a big bearing on the design of the kitchen as there is clearly a difference between a fast food takeaway and an a la carte waiter service. Equally a works canteen with self-service or counter-service will need extra hot cabinets and good lighting along the counter.

The design of the catering area has to be based upon the smooth and logical flow of raw ingredients to return of used dishes and cutlery. But in the end it has to come down to the professionalism of the service and not many of us return voluntarily to a restaurant where this aspect of the business is left wanting.

Always leave kitchen design to a professional company unless you are highly experienced with plenty of hands-on experience of working in a commercial kitchen.

With current computer programs specifically intended to help design the commercial kitchen it is possible to construct an on-screen three dimensional picture of the finished article and play around with a few changes if it’s necessary.

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