What equipment services should be lined up before a restaurant opens?

Before day one: an equipment service relationship (ideally with PM terms), hood cleaning on the NFPA 96 schedule, fire suppression inspection dates, grease trap pumping, and water treatment installed for ice, steam, and espresso equipment. Opening week is the worst possible time to be searching for a service company for the first time.

What should I check before buying used kitchen equipment?

Run it under load, not just powered on: refrigeration should hit and hold temperature, fryers should hold setpoint, and door gaskets, hinges, and racks tell you how it was treated. Check the model and serial plate for age, ask for service records, price the gaskets and worn parts into your offer, and remember used equipment carries no warranty and often no installation support.

New Restaurant Equipment Checklist

Published 07.30.2026. The equipment and service side of an opening; your architect, health department, and fire marshal govern the build itself.

Before you buy

Spec equipment to your menu and your utilities: gas sizing, electrical capacity, ventilation, and floor drains constrain more menus than budgets do. Weigh new versus used honestly: new brings warranties and warranty rules worth reading first; used saves capital but arrives with no coverage, so test under load, read the serial plate for age, and price worn gaskets and parts into the offer. For design-heavy projects, foodservice design firms in our installation category handle concept-to-commissioning.

Before day one: the service stack

Line up an equipment service relationship before you need it, ideally with PM terms, and register every warranty. Install the water treatment your ice machine, steamer, and espresso manuals specify; scale damage claims start on day one. Set the three compliance calendars: hood cleaning, fire suppression inspection, and grease trap pumping, in one folder with the reports as they come.

Opening week

Log baseline temperatures on every refrigeration unit and calibrate cooking equipment to spec while everything is new and covered; drift later becomes obvious against a baseline. Train closers on the daily equipment tasks (gaskets, filters, ice bin discipline, wand and group cleaning if you pour espresso) and post the emergency numbers, including who answers after hours.

The mistake every first-timer makes

Waiting for the first breakdown to find a service company, then choosing whoever answers fastest at the worst possible moment. Our choosing guide covers how to vet before the emergency, and the metro pages list who actually covers your address.

Who fixes this, and what we checked

This directory lists 92 companies that do installation and design work across Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Every one of them had its website opened and read by a person rather than scraped, which is how we found the parked domains, wrong phone numbers and closed businesses documented on our verification findings page.

92 verified companies
35 confirmed by a phone call
70 publish 24/7 or emergency cover
4 publish a licence number you can check

A published 24/7 claim is what the company says, not what we have proven. We are testing those claims by calling them after hours and will publish what actually happens. Until then, treat the promise as a promise.

Companies serving your area

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