3 types of multitasking equipment you need in your kitchen

In restaurants and commercial kitchens, the pressure is always on to cut time and labor costs. The good news? There are more than a few types of multitasking equipment out there to help meet your bottom-line demands while keeping your food delicious and your customers satisfied.

Multitasking cooking centers

Compact units offer an array of functions in one versatile, hardworking package. Multitasking cooking centers present operators with the option to cook several different types of food at a variety of temperatures, quickly.  Not only that, but they can help cut food waste by promoting a longer shelf life of food, and ensuring fewer instances of undercooking via their temperature probes. Labor and utility costs can also be cut with the help of this hardware, since self-cooking programs can be run on these centers (allowing the machine to go unattended).

Multifunctional cook pieces

What works well about multi-functional cook pieces is that they do a lot more than save on space and the cost of equipment. They also require less overall manpower – so you can run them with fewer people and reduce your labor costs. Plus, they make the work easier and the food better.

• Multi-functional food processors: These pieces are precise enough to make high-quality, coarsely-chopped salsa but still powerful enough to blend and puree.
• Conveyor ovens: These allow you to handle multiple food and temperature demands, and grill meat as easily as they bake pizzas.
• Multi-cook ovens: These let you simultaneously cook four different foods at four different temperatures in separate compartments.
• Tilt skillets: A tool of many trades, tilting skillets can be used for a variety of purposes including grilling, frying, simmering and braising.

Equipment with pre-programmable settings

Another kitchen innovation helping create speedier processes – equipment with pre-programmable settings. For instance, many of today’s combi-ovens give you, the cooking professional, control to enhance (not replace) an oven’s capabilities by auto-setting the machine’s humidity based on temperature. This eliminates the need to program settings for every item or recipe on the menu. Many of today’s beverage machines, too, come equipped with multiple settings, capable of making everything from a regular coffee to a cup of cappuccino!

What’s more, compact, “cleaner” technologies (ventless fryers, induction cooking) allow employees to “set it and forget it.” Quick-cook, pre-programmed combi-ovens that turn off automatically are just one example of this type of innovative technology.