Finding the Right Commercial Toaster for Your Kitchen
- Written by FED
For restaurants, cafes and food-serving businesses that have toasts on their menu, a commercial bread toaster is an essential piece of equipment. The right one can make all the difference when it comes to yield and quality of toast. Obviously, you need a piece of commercial kitchen equipment that makes the process faster and more efficient so you can serve those hungry patrons.
What is a commercial toaster?
Just like what you usually have at home, a commercial toaster can be used to toast bread, muffins, buns and bagels. Compare to their domestic counterpart, commercial bread toasters are typically designed to handle large quantities of bread. They are built heavy-duty for commercial settings so they can withstand demands or bulk orders. Commercial bread toasters are typically larger than domestically used toasters. They also have more slots for bread, allowing you to make more toast at once.
Commercial toasters often feature timers and automatic shut-offs which make them ideal for busy businesses. While most home toasters use conductive heat, commercial-grade equipment often uses radiant heat for even toasting. These features make the difference when it comes to domestic toasters versus the ones that are made for business use.
What are the types of toasters?
There are three popular types of commercial bread toasters use by professional kitchens: pop-up, conveyor and toaster ovens. Your spatial requirement, menu, toasting speed and energy efficiency should be taken into consideration before purchasing a piece of equipment.
It should also be a machine that can be operated by any of your staff, just in case the person handling a specific toast menu goes MIA or onto a holiday.
Pop-up toasters are ideal for breakfast cafes, mom-and-pop diners, bakeries, sandwich shops, fast foods and small to medium restaurants serving toast. They can serve you well if you have a low demand for toast on daily bases, i.e if you have toast as one of your side menus. Commercial-grade pop-up toasters are often available at two to eight-slot options.
Conveyor toasters are bigger equipment. These are good for self-serving buffets, catering businesses, and busy restaurants. Buns, bagels, and bread are loaded into a slow-moving conveyor belt and into a heated section where they are toasted. The toasted bread falls into the slanted chut ready to be collected.
Oven toasters function by putting items below the rack, over it or on both sides, depending on their function. These equipment are quite versatile. Not only you can use them for bread, but they can also be used for a variety of tasks including melting cheese on nachos, roasting chicken or baking muffins. They come in a variety of styles, sizes and capacities.
Purchasing consideration to get the best commercial toaster
Knowing the type of menu you'd do on daily bases is essential so you can pick the right equipment.
If your menu needs to be cooked at a specific temperature, then this should factor into your buying choice. Equipment like pop-up toasters have limited temperature control so this wouldn't be the best option in such a case.
If your business produces different sorts of bread, then a conveyor toaster would be best because it has a larger open space. The bigger open space allows you to stash bread in different sizes, unlike pop-up toasters where your production is limited to sliced bread.
There are also units that can produce certain numbers of slices per hour, an essential feature to look at if you want to predict the volume of toast you can create. For example, heavy-duty pop-up toasters can yield up to 300 slices of bread per hour. Base your production demands number on the busiest day to get the most ideal toaster. For instance, if your busiest day produces 800 pieces of toast a day, then you need equipment that can produce at least 100 toast an hour if you’re operating eight hours a day.
If you are looking into using a toaster for a variety of menus, then the versatile oven toaster might come in handy for those.
Maintenance and check-up for toasters
Commercial toasters undergo heavy work on daily bases in professional settings. Therefore, maintenance and check-ups are necessary for optimal performance and to extend the lifespan of your equipment. Know that faulty equipment will not only churn more energy but can lead to risks for your staff and your business.
On daily bases, the equipment will accumulate crumbs and grease. It should be a part of your staff’s daily task to clean the unit after shifts. The equipment should be properly and thoroughly cleaned.
Before cleaning the unit, switch it off, unplug and allow it to cool down. The outside part can be wiped using damped clothes and hard-to-reach spaces can be cleaned with brushes. Remove that crumb tray, clean it and dry it to be ready for use for the next shift. Never shake the equipment it can dislodge the parts.
Aside from cleaning crumbs and grime, electrical wires should be checked. The fan opening should be cleaned. There should also be enough clearance to allow proper airflow and avoid overheating.
Now, the floor is yours
So now it all comes down to you. As a quick recap, you need a piece of equipment that can handle the busiest day in your business. It should be energy efficient and easy to use by your staff. It needs to fit into your space without hiding workflow and traffic flow.
Purchasing considerations checklist:
- Brand
- Cost
- Type
- Dimension
- Chambers
- Slots
- Easy to use
- Temperature control
- Slice capacity per hour
- Volts, amps and watts
