It can be very tempting, turning your home kitchen to a head chef’s office space. But too often, people try to turn it to a dream and end up realizing that it’s a waste of money. Here are a few reasons why home kitchens usually don’t mix well with commercial restaurant equipment.

One good reason is that home kitchens are simply too small. As a rule of thumb, the average kitchen is around 100 square feet (or about 10×10). Restaurant kitchens on the other hand, are typically a lot larger (possibly even as large as your home, depending on how large/busy your kitchen is). While some of the equipment you (will) see at the Frog might be good-sized for your home kitchen, often times it’ll be too big/heavy for your kitchen to handle. Remember that it’s not just the open physical space you have to worry about, you also have to think about load weight of your floor as well.

Another reason why your home kitchen might need a pass on professional equipment is that it might be too powerful. Keep in mind, restaurant equipment are meant to take constant abuse and yet still last a long time. If you want to do artisan dinners or try out some experimental dishes, then your 5-figure range with an included griddle might be overkill. Also, a number of kitchen equipment might have three, four, five, or even six-phase electrical requirements. A home usually has a three-phase for washers/dryers, but that’s basically it. Otherwise, you’d have to do some extensive electrical work.

And yet a third reason why it’s probably not a good idea to put commercial stuff in your home kitchen is that it’s not particularly cost-effective. Not only are restaurant equipment more expensive in the first place, but they are no cheap to maintain. Yes, they’ll last long, but finding a technician that does commercial equipment and getting the parts for it adds a lot of dough in the long run. Sure it will be a long time before you might even have to think about that, but when parts cost as much as getting a new range from Best Buy, the pain starts to settle in.

Now let’s be clear, we are not saying not to buy them at all. We sell them, as you can see from our 100,000 square-feet warehouse. But there are times where you, the homeowner, want to kick things up a notch–think twice. However restaurant owners on the other hand? Come on in to One Fat Frog at 2416 Sand Lake Road or call us at (407) 480-3409.