Guide to Matching Your Restaurant Equipment to Your Menu

As you probably already know, the menu you choose to offer is the most important choices you will have to make when opening a restaurant. It basically dictates the price range of your restaurant and your clientèle base, as well as what kind of equipment you will need to invest in. Since the success of your restaurant often depends on loyal customers who love your food, it is crucial to invest in the proper equipment. This guide will tell you what kind of equipment you will need for some of the most popular restaurant items.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Make sure you have a good steam kettle for soups and stews

You actually have a few options if soup is going to be a featured item on your menu. You can go with a steam kettle, a stock pot, or, if space is limited, you can use the spare burner on a heavy duty range. However, your best bet is probably a steam kettle because it will heat the soup or stew evenly, rather than just at the bottom like a stock pot does. A steam kettle will help prevent burning this way.

I recommend:

• Steam kettles with a spigot to let you decant more easily.
• Garland ranges are quite good, if you do choose to go with a stock pot range
• To learn more about commercial ranges, check out howstuffworks.com
  

Get a quality pizza prep table, if you serve pizza at all.

Pizza prep tables are refrigerated, unlike other work/prep tables, allowing you to keep the toppings cold and readily available. These are a must-have from an efficiency standpoint as well as a food safety perspective. You are also going to want to invest in a good oven. There are several choices for this, depending on your production rate and your budget. Pizza deck ovens are very popular in many pizza places because they tend to be fairly inexpensive. However, these are not very efficient. If pizza is going to be your main menu item, you may wish to purchase an impinger oven. They are conveyer ovens that use impinge technology to cook the pizza very quickly by forcing heat through the crust.

I recommend:

• Pizza prep tables are available through any pizza supply store, but some of the better ones are: pizza-equipment.com and northernpizzaequipment.com
• Pizzaovens.com is a good place to find both pizza deck ovens and impinger ovens.
  
• Pizzatools.com has a lot of other pizza supplies.
  

Get the right type of oven for your style of sandwich

If you are planning on making bread in house, you will need a convection oven. These types of ovens will evenly heat the dough which is essential to mass-producing quality bread. If you are going to need to reheat some of the sandwich items, be sure to have a commercial microwave in your kitchen. Don't cut corners by getting a residential microwave because they are not built for frequent use that will come in a restaurant, and will burn out quickly. If you want to serve toasted sandwiches, you will need to invest in a conveyor toaster oven. They make prepping and toasting sandwiches very efficient.

I recommend:

• You can find both conveyor ovens and commercial convection ovens at bellecocooking.com.
• Microwave Specialists Inc. has a great selection of commercial microwaves.  I recommend the Amana products.
• You will also want to purchase a sandwich prep table, which is similar to a pizza prep table.  You can find these at Burkett Restaurant Equipment and Supplies or Central Restaurant
  
• Depending on what kind of sandwich you want to serve, panini grills might be handy, and slicers can be invaluable.