Restaurant Equipment: Hot Plate

The tools you and your staff have to cook food in a commercial kitchen are directly related to how fast you can produce it. The faster you produce food, the more customers your business can serve. Even if it only one extra table an hour – the result is more profits for your business. Unfortunately a lot of restaurants (especially smaller locations) just don’t have the cooking power to be able to keep up to the busiest meal times. When this happens customers are waiting longer than they should for their food and satisfaction plummets.

There are a variety of ways you can help improve the speed of your commercial kitchen, but many of them are costly and time consuming. If you want to quickly and easily help significantly impact your kitchen’s ability to cook excellent meals, you should definitely consider buying a commercial hot plate.

What Can a Hot Plate do for My Business?
A hot plate is simply an extra set of stove top burners. This means that you can easily double or even triple the cooking capacity of your commercial kitchen for a fraction of the cost of having a new stove top installed. Like a countertop range, they can be powered with gas or electricity, so there is no worry about what type of power you are using in your business. The biggest advantage to having more burners is obviously the ability to have more food being cooked per hour. This can be a huge advantage to businesses as it allows you to serve more customers per hour.

How Much Should I Spend on my Hot Plate?
If you are just looking for a two burner hot plate, you don’t need to more than $700. From there, add about $100 for each additional burner, with high grade six burner models going for about $1500. One thing to remember about some hot plate designs is that they don’t offer the same potential as others. Two burner designs allow for a separate pot or pan on each burner, while most four or six burner models will only accommodate one or two extra pots or pans. There are exceptions to this like the Vulcan-Hart four burner hot plate with a step built in between the front and back burners. This is one of the only models to offer true four burner capacity.