Kit for a quick bite

SOME RELATIVELY lightweight snack equipment can make a heavyweight contribution to a pub's food profits. Investment in snack equipment is low compared to equipping a full kitchen, while profit margins on snack food can be high.

Focusing on snacks is a quick and easy route for pubs looking to expand the food offer. Snacks are by definition a light bite, but may attract food sales over longer hours.

As ever, the temptation may be to cut corners, but using anything less than commercial equipment will mean it is unlikely to be up to the demands of a busy pub.

Potato ovens​: Baked potatoes are a pub food institution, and while they can be cooked back-of-house and held in a warming cupboard, a counter-top potato oven acts as a cooker, a holding cabinet and a merchandiser in one. Most are made using enamelled cast iron to give that traditional appearance.

The cooking is done on racks using gas or electric convection. The holding drawer or cabinet should be matched to the cooking capacity, so an oven that can cook 30 potatoes in an hour has a holding drawer that can also take 30 potatoes to ensure a joined-up cooking and delivery cycle.

The normal way to operate a baked potato oven is for the first batch to go into the cooker one hour before service commences. These are then stored for sale in the holding drawer and a fresh batch of potatoes loaded into the oven.

If demand is high, extra potatoes can be cooked in the pub kitchen in a conventional oven and both the glass-fronted cooking and the holding drawer used to hold cooked jacket potatoes.

Some baked potato ovens have a built-in bain-marie to hold toppings such as baked beans or curry sauce, or a refrigerated bain-marie for holding grated cheese and coleslaw.

A flat surface around the bain-marie creates a cutting and topping work-station. It is also possible to get merchandising accessories such as menu boards setting out prices and toppings available.

Contact grills​: Professional contact grills look similar to the popular domestic 'George Foreman' double-sided hinged grills, but are much more powerful, have larger grilling surfaces and are built for a long life.

They are versatile in what they can cook and can generate high percentage margins for a pub.They occupy very little room, work off a standard 13-amp power socket and come with either flat plates or ribbed grilling plates. Double grill units with independent heat settings and top grills are widely available.

By cooking on two sides at once, they cook meats very quickly, sealing the surface on items such as steaks and chicken fillets and keeping in the moisture. They are very good for producing high menu price snacks such as hot steak or chicken baguettes.

Contact grills can turn out much simpler items such as burgers, bacon, sausages and toasted sandwiches, either traditional British sarnies, or Italian-style toasted sandwiches - which is why they are sometimes referred to as panini grills.

Hot dogs​: Hot dogs are ready cooked but need heating. There are three ways of heating the sausages: on a roller grill,in a hot dog steamer, or in hot water.

Hot water is not recommended as it leeches out the flavour and seasoning from the sausage.

Hot dog steamers are a type of table-top bain-marie. The base has a heated water bath and suspended over it is an inner pan in which the sausages are held. The advantage of this double pan system is that the temperature of the sausages never rises above 75ÞC.

Beyond that temperature there is the risk of the skins splitting, particularly with high-quality sausages which have natural skins rather than synthetic.

This style of hot dog machine tends to be used where demand is heavy. Some units come with heated spikes. The finger roll is pushed onto the spike to warm up and when removed there is a hole in the bread into which the sausage can be pushed.

Hot dog rollers make great theatre, allowing the customer to see the hot dogs rolling around. The heat comes from elements running through the rollers. They can be gas heated, but more commonly are electric.

Buying one with non-stick rollers prevents sticking, which can occur if the sausages get too hot. A useful accessory is a bun warmer, which can be sited underneath the roller to hold ready split finger rolls. Also very useful is a sneeze guard to maintain high standards of food hygiene.

Snack warmer cabinets​: Often called pie-warmers, these are not just warming cabinets but merchandisers that can sit at the back of the bar in a pub.

Apart from an attractive cabinet with good all-round vision, lighting in the cabinet will add to the impulse buying appeal of the food. If the cabinet is fitted with a humidifier, the foods in the cabinet will stay fresher and moist for a much longer period than in a dry-heat only cabinet.

Humidifiers can be something as simple as a built-in water trough which causes water vapour to be released into the cabinet, but more sophisticated models will have automatic atmospheric and temperature control. Check to see if there is a feature on the unit which stops misting up, which would prevent the food from being properly viewed by the customer.

Juicers: ​There are huge profits in serving freshly-prepared juices across the bar. Just 50p worth of fruit or vegetables blitzed through a juicer can sell for upwards of £3.

There are dedicated orange juicers, but a pub would need a high volume of orange juice sales to justify one. Far more versatile is a centrifugal juice extractor. These machines separate the pulp from the juice, unlike a lightweight juicer which allows pulp to mix with the juice.

Centrifugal juicers can also extract juice from hard products such as carrot, apples, and hard flavourings such as root ginger. There are scores of recipes available from suppliers of these machines.

It is common for a centrifugal juicer to be used in conjunction with a professional jug blender so different flavour juices can be combined with ice into smoothies, another high-profit snack item for a pub.

CESA, the Equipment Suppliers Association, has buying and using information on every aspect of kitchen equipment. Learn more and find a supplier by visiting www.cesa.org.uk