Equipment and assets
Every asset in the kitchen is on a clock, and care winds it. The honest lifespan ranges, the maintenance that decides where you land in them, and when to stop repairing.
Equipment and assets
Ask three operators how long a fryer lasts and you will get three answers, all correct for their kitchen. Trade lifespan tables are ranges, not promises, because the two things that decide where a unit lands in its range - hours of use and quality of care - vary more between kitchens than between brands. Knowing the ranges still matters: they tell you what to budget, when a repair stops making sense, and how much life the second-hand unit you are eyeing has really got left.
The ranges
The pattern under the numbers is simple: the more an asset relies on refrigerant circuits, water chemistry, electronics or hot oil, the shorter its life; the closer it is to a lump of folded stainless steel, the longer. A combi oven is a boiler, a fan, a computer and a door seal in one box, and lives 7-10 years. The bench beside it will outlast the lease.
The multiplier
The same unit can plausibly die at eight years or retire at sixteen, and the gap is almost entirely care. Trade engineers put it bluntly: a commercial refrigeration unit that is not maintained can lose half its expected life. The mechanisms are mundane - dust-blanketed condenser coils cooking a compressor, perished door seals making it run constantly, scale strangling a dishwasher element, grease baking onto fryer burners - and every one of them announces itself long before the failure, to anyone who looks.
Repair or replace
The trade's rule of thumb is the rule of 50: when a unit is past half its expected life and the repair quote is past half its replacement cost, replace. A 900 pound compressor in a nine-year-old reach-in is a bad trade; a 300 pound thermostat in a four-year-old fryer is an easy yes. The rule needs judgement at the edges - premium mixers and ranges justify repairs that budget kit never will - but it stops the slow bleed of paying, in instalments, more than a new unit would have cost, for equipment that fails anyway.
The other half of the discipline is refusing to let a failure be a surprise. Age every asset on a simple register, plan replacements a budget year ahead, and schedule the swap for a quiet week instead of the Saturday the compressor picks - the arithmetic of unplanned failure is in why kitchen downtime costs more than operators think, and the scheduling craft in scheduling deep maintenance without closing the restaurant.
Questions
Trade ranges cluster around 8-12 years, with well-maintained units credibly reaching 15 or more. The variables are oil discipline and cleaning: daily filtering, regular boil-outs and clean burners or elements keep the unit near its rated efficiency and off the failure curve, while baked-on grease and neglected thermostats push it toward the early end.
Usually whatever combines electronics, water and heat. Ice machines and dishwashers (7-10 years) suffer from water chemistry; combi ovens (7-10) pack a boiler, fan and control board into one box; hard-run fryers and reach-in refrigeration follow. Plain stainless - benches, sinks, shelving - and simple ranges effectively last as long as they are wanted.
It can be, if you price the remaining life rather than the condition. A nine-year-old ice machine is near the end of its range however clean it looks; a five-year-old range from the 15-20 year tier has most of its life left. Ask for the service history, check the tired components - seals, coils, elements - and value it against the lifespan tables, not the paint.
Yes, in two ways. Directly: grease and dust are insulators and corrosives, so removing them lets compressors, coils, burners and boards run at design temperature instead of cooking themselves. Indirectly: a clean kitchen makes early warnings visible - the weeping seal, the scorched terminal, the drip trail - so faults get fixed as small jobs instead of discovered as failures.
Apply the rule of 50 as a starting point: past half the expected lifespan and past half the replacement cost, replace rather than repair. Then adjust for the asset - premium mixers and simple ranges reward repair almost indefinitely, while electronics-heavy kit near end of range will fail again soon whatever you fix. Repeated call-outs on the same unit are the clearest signal of all.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
Extraction canopies and ductwork last 15-20 years - when the grease comes off on schedule. TR19 Grease cleaning with certification, banded to your cooking hours.