The search for “the right oven” for a new bakery led entrepreneurs at the Sugarie Bake Shop, Pleasanton, Calif., to Pacific Gas and Electric’s Food Service Technology Center. There they found advice not only on ovens but just about every other piece of equipment intended for their shop.

Before any big equipment purchase, you should talk to the dealer to make sure you’re getting the right piece of equipment for the job. One concessionaire is still learning this lesson the hard way after deciding to use three deep-fat fryers to boil saltwater instead of oil. Duffy’s Equipment Service, Sauquoit, N.Y., was repeatedly called…

The 400-bed hospital’s chief engineer, assistant engineer and kitchen manager repeatedly tried and failed to get the facility’s rack-conveyor dishmachine to work. But even after spending hundreds of dollars in replacement parts, including a new transformer, the machine would not operate. At a loss to figure out the problem, the engineering team called Commercial Kitchen…

Two hours before opening time at a sports pub in Windham, Maine, an equipment dealer realized the two new custom conveyor ovens being installed were set up for liquid-petroleum (LP) gas. The restaurant required equipment built for natural gas. The installers had already moved the original ovens out the back door. The dealer called the…

It pays to hire a qualified service technician. Take it from Dee Holt, service manager, and Bob Clipperton, certified master technician, at the Goodwin Tucker Group, Des Moines, Iowa.  Holt recently took a call from the owner of a Mexican restaurant who had a broken down walk-in cooler. The owner said that someone from a…

At one university, the rubberized band-style belt on a soiled tray conveyor system was mysteriously snapping every couple nights. Techs from American Kitchen Machinery & Repair, Philadelphia, repeatedly mended the belt and replaced worn parts. But the emergency calls kept coming. “The operator would call us angry because we had just fixed the belt the…

“It’s making a funny noise.” That was how the maintenance head at the 500-bed Youngstown, Ohio, hospital described the sounds coming from the facility’s new pulper, installed only a month prior. The service technician who called for the repair found the sounds anything but funny. “It was more of a grinding, crunching, metallic sound,” says…

A service call came in about the margarita machine at a Mexican family-dining restaurant about three hours away from Refrigerated Specialist Inc., located in Mesquite, Texas. RSI had leased the machine to the restaurant owners about 10 months earlier. “They told us the machine had been making a squealing noise when it was running, and…