Tips for ensuring a long lifespan for your catering equipment

Commercial kitchen equipment is designed to be hardwearing to ensure a long lifespan despite the heavy use it endures daily. However, when a piece of equipment breaks it can bring the whole kitchen to a standstill – resulting in loss of revenue.

But taking care of your equipment doesn’t have to be difficult! We have compiled a list of top tips on the upkeep of your equipment to ensure a long and productive lifespan!

1. Review the Owner Manual

First and foremost, each piece of equipment comes with a commercial guide advising on the best way to properly service and maintain the equipment.

It is always best for you and your employees to familiarise yourselves with the key instructions on maintaining equipment with day-to-day cleaning duties.

2. Employee Training

Staff training is the most effective way of preventing the failure of equipment before it has happened. By teaching employees which functions to clean and how to use equipment effectively, they will be able to spot when parts are defective or broken.

In such cases, immediate steps should be taken to replace any defective parts as soon as possible. Having a reliable contractor supplying spare parts is vital in reducing service downtime.

If this happens, NCE is on hand to provide all major commercial spare parts to ensure the fast repair of all kitchen equipment.

3. Cleaning & Sanitisation

Regular cleaning and sanitation of equipment is not only essential for the health and safety of your customers, but also the upkeep of your equipment. By cleaning equipment daily, it prevents the build-up of grease, grime, and food particles that can cause hazards to an equipment’s function and potentially to an employee’s health.

In participating in regular cleaning activities, the risk of failure in equipment is dramatically reduced, making your equipment last longer – saving those vital pennies which are better spent elsewhere!

Along with day-to-day preventive measures, we suggest at least one annual deep clean a year. In doing so, you can identify any problems with equipment in one go, to reduce the impact of failures throughout the rest of the year.

4. Preventative Maintenance 

To continue to make sure equipment is working as effectively as possible, it is best to have a good Preventative Maintenance Plan in place. Here at NCE, we can work with you to schedule evaluations of your equipment, to stop any failures, before they happen.

Our team of experts are on hand and RATIONAL trained for all preventative measures to ensure the prolonged life on a variety of catering equipment.

5. Reactive Call Out Measures 

In the foodservice industry time is money. So when equipment breaks down its vital to have a professional yet speedy service to call to get productivity back to where it should be as quick as possible.

That is why NCE offers Reactive Call Outs. Our engineers are trained on a large variety of appliances meaning we can take care of the repairs efficiently whilst you focus on higher productivity.

6. Contingency Planning

Unfortunately, sometimes nothing can be done to fix equipment and the only option is to get it replaced. However, we understand Covid has had an impact on budgets.

That is why we also stock Second-hand Reconditioned Catering Equipment. This way you can still get a hold of equipment of the highest industry-standard at more affordable prices!

Ensuring equipment is working effectively and safely is imperative for you, your employees, and your customers. 

 For further help and advice, call us today on 0113 808 7770 or email info@northerncatering.co.uk to see how we can tailor a Preventative Maintenance Plan for the prolonged life on your equipment!