Maintenance Tips for Restaurant Equipment

If you currently own a restaurant, or you are looking into opening your first one, your kitchen is going to be the heart of the whole business. Because the kitchen is so important, you are going to need to know the basics of equipment maintenance in order to guarantee not only the quality of food, but the quality of health, for your patrons.

A dirty or broken piece of equipment can cause you all kinds of headaches and eventually shut your restaurant down completely. In order to keep this from happening, there are a few guidelines that you should be aware of.

The most important tip is to keep things clean while you are working. This can be a bit daunting, especially when you have a pretty big dinner rush, but if you take the time to keep your kitchen equipment clean while you are using them, it will take less time to clean it when you close. Keeping your equipment clean while you are working is a great idea, but sometimes it’s just not feasible so you have to worry about it later when the kitchen is closed. That is when you will deep clean everything in your kitchen.

When it comes to cleaning and maintaining your kitchen equipment, you have to realize that spills are the most common things you will have to clean up, but there is also grease and grime that starts to build up over time. In convection ovens, you will need to wipe up any spills as soon as they happen. Be careful because the oven will still be hot, but if you let a spill sit in an oven it will become charred and take you twice as long to clean it up. This is a good thing to remember when dealing with grills as well.

Your walk-in coolers and freezers should have the doors closed when they are not in use. If you leave the doors open, you will find the temperature inside will drop and your food will start to thaw out or spoil. You will also want to clean up any spills immediately as they can freeze solid in the freezer in a short amount of time and cause someone to slip and fall in a cooler.

With steam tables, you will need to make sure to keep the water level where it is supposed to be and clean up spills before they get into the heating elements. By keeping your equipment cleaned and running in top order, you will save money.