Foodservice Guides
Commercial Smoker Guide
A commercial smoker comes down to three decisions: how it makes heat and smoke, how many pounds of meat it has to hold on your busiest day, and where it can legally stand. Wood pellet smokers burn pellets for both heat and smoke a...
Pizza Box Sizes and Dimensions
A pizza box is named for the pizza it carries: a 12-inch box holds a 12-inch pie, and a 16-inch box holds a 16-inch pie. Square corrugated boxes run from small personal sizes up to extra large, in two depths, and round molded fibe...
Aluminum Foil Pan Sizes: Dimensions and Capacities
Aluminum foil pans come in three families: steam table pans that follow the same full, half and third sizes as metal hotel pans; bakery pans for loaves, pies, tarts and cakes; and to-go containers in round, oblong and compartment ...
Food Thermometer Guide
A food thermometer in a commercial kitchen has to be accurate to within 2Ā°F, calibrated as often as its maker requires, and fitted with a thin probe for thin foods such as burger patties and fish fillets. Those are FDA Food Code r...
Restaurant Glassware Types Guide
Restaurant glassware sorts into four families: beverage tumblers for water and soft drinks, cocktail glasses for anything with spirits in it, stemware for wine and sparkling wine, and the specialty pieces for beer, coffee and casu...
Food Date Labeling Guide
Ready-to-eat food that needs time and temperature control for safety, kept refrigerated and held longer than 24 hours, must be marked with the day it has to be used or thrown away, and it gets seven days at 41Ā°F or colder, countin...
Grease Trap Sizing Guide
A grease trap is sized by flow rate: add up the water the sinks that drain into it can release, take 75 percent of it, and divide by the drain time your plumbing code uses, one or two minutes. Pick the next trap rated at or above ...
Disposable Glove Guide
Nitrile is the all-round disposable glove for food work: FDA's glove guidance rates it strong, durable and oil resistant, good with greasy food and for tasks of up to about an hour. Poly gloves suit quick assembly jobs under five ...
Trash Can and Liner Sizing Guide
A trash can liner fits by its flat width and length, not by the gallon number on the box: the width should be about half the distance around the inside of the rim, and the length the can's depth plus half its base plus 3 to 4 inch...
Dish and Glass Rack Sizing Guide
A standard commercial dish rack is the full-size "20 by 20" rack, which measures about 19-3/4 inches square on the outside, and nearly every commercial dishwasher and most rack-style glasswashers are built to take it. Half-size ra...
Guest Check Guide
Guest checks are one of the cheapest things a restaurant buys and one of the most handled. Every order starts on one, the kitchen often cooks from a copy of one, and every missing one is a question about money. Choosing them comes...
Cutting Board Color Code Guide
A color-coded board system is the cheapest food safety control a kitchen can install. It costs a set of boards and one training shift, and it turns cross-contamination from something a cook has to remember into something a cook ca...
Refrigerated Prep Table Sizing Guide
A refrigerated prep table is bought by the inch and used by the pan. Those two numbers are linked, and almost every sizing mistake comes from shopping one without counting the other. This guide covers the width ladder, standard to...
Soda Fountain and Beverage Dispenser Guide
A soda fountain is not one machine. It is a water line, a gas line, a syrup rack, a cooling method and a row of valves, and four of those five live somewhere other than the counter. That is what makes the first purchase go wrong. ...
Commercial Sink Sizing Guide
A commercial kitchen does not have a sink. It has four or five of them, each one legally barred from doing another one's job, and the inspector checks all of them. That is the part nobody explains before the plans go in. This guid...
Commercial Combi Oven Guide
A combi oven is the only cooking cabinet that changes what kind of heat it makes. It runs dry air like a convection oven, it makes steam like a steamer, and it runs both together. It is also the machine researched last and install...
Walk-In Cooler and Freezer Sizing Guide
A walk-in is the only piece of kitchen equipment that is also a room. That changes the sizing question entirely: a box one size too small cannot be topped up later, and one size too large costs money to run every hour for a decade...
Commercial Coffee Grinder Guide
The grinder is the piece of coffee equipment bought last and blamed first. A brewer can only extract what the grinder hands it, and no machine rescues grounds that are half dust and half gravel. The decision is awkward because gri...