Outfitting Your Kitchen for Home Catering

If you’re planning a home catering business, you might want to consider installing appliances that will be appropriate for the size of your cooking and baking projects. A regular home kitchen will quickly feel claustrophobic and overworked if you prepare large meals or colorful party platters with limited space and tools.

Below are some suggestions if you’re planning to outfit a kitchen for home catering:

Consider a professional-level range: Look for a range that might be larger than your home range and that can handle a variety of heavy tasks. The Aga Legacy 44 Dual Fuel Range, for example, offers 60-inches of pro-style cooking performance in a 44-inch package. It can bake, broil, steam, stir-fry, roast and boil all at the same time…and this beautiful range looks good doing it.

Choose the right cooktop: Viking’s professional line of cooktops includes gas cooktops, electric cooktops, and induction cooktops. Cooktop preferences are individual for each cook, but consider flexibility, efficiency, convenience, and ease of cleanup if you’re going to be running a busy catering kitchen.

Base your oven choice on size, efficiency and style of cooking: The size of your oven will be a critical factor in how much catering work you can take on, and how long each project will take. Of course different cooks prefer different oven options, so it’s important to choose an oven that will perform the way you want it to when you prepare the type of meals you offer through your business. A combination oven might make sense for versatility: this Masterpiece Series 30 inch wall oven from Thermador works as both a convection oven and a convection microwave. Thermador’s Masterpiece steam and convection oven offers an option for cooks who swear by steam ovens but will still need to make use of the convection option.

Refrigeration will be more important than ever. In order to store large amounts of ingredients, as well as prepared foods that have not yet been sent out for delivery, high storage capacity should be a priority when considering the purchase of a refrigerator. You might even want to consider an outdoor model to complement your in-home fridge; this GE Monogram model offers a stainless steel outdoor design with a professional grade exterior that stands up to even demanding environmental conditions. The appliance offers adjustable temperature control, an LED temperature display, removable “spillproof” glass shelves, a QuickSpace shelf that slides out of the way to make room for tall items, and a beverage shelf on full extension slides that accommodates up to five wine bottles.

Add wine storage to your kitchen or storage area. If your catering jobs will include the provision of wine, you’ll want to be sure that your wine storage is as professional as your business. We offer a number of premium wine storage options designed to fit into a variety of spaces while preserving both red and white wines to perfection. The Sub-Zero 424 Free-Standing Wine Storage unit, for example, features five shelves and a 46-bottle capacity.

Be sure to purchase a high-powered dishwasher: The clean-up jobs you’ll be handling as a professional will surpass anything you tackled when clearing individual meals. Once again you’ll be looking for high capacity, but this time in a powerful, efficient, and versatile cleaning machine. Fisher & Paykel’s DishDrawer Tall model, for example, features the ergonomically superior design of the company’s DishDrawer series while increasing the height of the top drawer to enable you to fit up to 13″ plates with ease.

The options for outfitting a home catering kitchen vary widely, and your choices will depend not only on appliance performance and capacity, but also on the types of foods you will prepare, your personal cooking preferences, and the space availability in (or outside) your home. Before you start planning the design of your home catering kitchen, stop by one of our showrooms. Our staff will be happy to discuss ideas and options with you, and to help you choose the best kitchen appliances for your business needs.