Maintenance · Kent
5 Signs Your Commercial Kitchen Equipment Needs Servicing
Commercial kitchen equipment rarely fails without warning. The warning just tends to arrive quietly: a slightly longer heat-up, a new noise from a fridge, a combi that no longer cooks evenly. Catch those and you pay service rates. Miss them and you pay emergency rates, usually mid-service on a Friday night.
Quick answer
Five things tell you a service is overdue, in the order our engineers see them most often:
- Longer heat-up times. An oven, combi or fryer taking noticeably longer to reach temperature usually means burner or element efficiency has dropped, or scale has built up on the water side.
- New or strange noises. Rattling, buzzing, clicking or grinding from refrigeration points to a condenser fan motor, loose compressor mounts or early bearing wear. Clicking that repeats every few minutes usually means the compressor is struggling to start.
- Leaks or excess moisture. Water under a fridge, condensation inside a cabinet, or damp around a warewasher door points to a blocked drain, a failed seal or a defrost fault. It is a slip hazard as well as a fault.
- Poor performance. A fridge drifting warm, an oven cooking unevenly across the cavity, or crockery coming out of the warewasher still marked. Output has dropped even though nothing has obviously failed.
- Higher energy or running costs. Dirty condenser coils, scaled elements and tired door gaskets all make equipment work harder for the same result, and the bill is usually where you notice it.
None of these are emergencies on the day you notice them. All of them get more expensive the longer they run.
What to do before calling an engineer
Ten minutes of checks will either settle it or give the engineer a head start:
- Time the heat-up. Note how long the appliance takes to reach its setpoint from cold and compare it against what the team remembers as normal. A number beats "it seems slow".
- Check the condenser. On any fridge, freezer or ice machine, look at the finned coil. Dust and grease on the fins is the most common cause of poor performance we find on site, and it is preventable.
- Check the door seals. Run a hand round the gasket for splits and flat spots. Close the door on a sheet of paper: if it pulls out with no resistance, the seal has gone.
- Read your temperature logs. A pattern of small deviations over a fortnight is far more useful to an engineer than one bad reading this morning.
- Descale where you can see scale. Across most of Kent the water is hard, so scale on combi oven boilers and warewasher elements is constant. Follow the manufacturer's descale procedure, not a general purpose cleaner.
- Write down what changed and when. New noise, new smell, new error code, and the date it started.
- Find the service record. If nobody can say when the appliance was last serviced, that is your answer.
⚠️Stop, this is not a servicing question
Call the same day, not at the next service, if you have:
- A smell of gas. Turn off at the emergency control valve, ventilate, leave electrical switches alone, and call the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999.
- Chilled food above 8°C. Move high risk stock to working refrigeration and log the temperatures. Above 8°C you are outside the legal limit and a HACCP control point has been breached.
- Anything tripping the electrics. Repeated tripping is a fault, not a nuisance. Leave it isolated.
- A burning smell, or scorching round a connection. Isolate at the wall and do not restart it to "see if it does it again".
- Water pooling near live equipment. A slip hazard, and usually a drain or defrost fault behind it.
Book a service before it becomes a call-out
Our engineers service cooking, refrigeration and warewashing equipment across east and central Kent, including Rational, Hobart, Winterhalter, Foster, Williams, Hoshizaki and Classeq.
📞 Call 01304 873469 Book an engineerNext steps
The Advantage Service Agreement
A structured annual service, gas soundness testing, a written equipment condition report, priority dispatch and 10% off labour and parts.
See service agreements →Repair or replace?
When a repeat fault means the appliance has reached the end of its economic life.
Read the guide →Fridge not getting cold?
The four common causes when commercial refrigeration stops holding temperature.
Read the guide →Commercial kitchen equipment servicing, common questions
How often should commercial kitchen equipment be serviced?
Once a year is the baseline for most cooking, refrigeration and warewashing equipment, and it is what a service agreement is built around. High volume sites, hard water areas and heavy fryer or combi use often justify twice a year. Gas appliances need an annual safety check regardless of how lightly they are used.
Is a service the same as a gas safety check?
No. A service covers condition and performance: cleaning, calibration, wear parts, seals and controls. A gas safety check is a separate duty covering soundness, ventilation, combustion and interlocks, carried out by a Gas Safe registered engineer qualified on commercial catering appliances. Most operators have both done in the same visit.
Does servicing actually save money?
It moves spend from unplanned to planned. A fouled condenser or a scaled element makes equipment draw more power for the same output, and a failure mid-service costs you the repair, the emergency rate and the lost covers. Agreement holders also get 10% off labour and parts on call-outs.
What does a service visit include?
A structured check against the manufacturer's schedule: cleaning condensers and filters, checking seals, gaskets and controls, calibration where relevant, gas soundness testing on gas appliances, and a written equipment condition report you can put in front of an EHO or an auditor.
Our equipment seems fine. Is a service still worth it?
The point of a service is to find what is not yet obvious. Seal wear, coil fouling, scale and drifting calibration all develop quietly, and none of them announce themselves until the appliance misses a temperature. Keeping the records also supports your food safety management system as due diligence evidence.
Equipment due a service? Talk to a Kent engineer.
Same working day for emergencies. 8am to 5pm Monday to Friday. Out of hours, leave a message.
📞 Call 01304 873469 See service agreements