Catering Equipment: Hire, Buy and Rent Explained | The Game Larder
Catering Equipment: Hire, Buy and Rent Explained
Catering equipment is the set of cooking, storage and service hardware a kitchen or outdoor event uses to prepare, hold and present food, and the 3 main routes to acquiring it are buying outright, hiring for a defined period, or renting for a single event. The range runs from 50 L refrigerated trolleys and 12 kW gas planchas to 10 seater banqueting sets and 2 000 L soup kettles, and the right route depends on how often you cook, how much capital you have, and whether the event is one off or recurring. On The Game Larder, catering equipment also means the specific kit that handles wild game, from a game larder cooler held at 2 to 4 C for 72 hours after the shoot to a 30 kg roasting spit that turns a whole stag on the bone for a country dinner party of 24.
Anyone planning a wild game dinner at home will want to pair the right hardware with the right technique, and our guide to Cooking Game for Home walks through the cuts, temperatures and resting times that keep venison, pheasant and partridge at their most tender. The people who actually run a game kitchen, from the prep bench to the service pass, are described in detail in What a Catering Assistant Does and Earns, including the 3 shifts, the 24 500 GBP median salary in London, and the 18 200 GBP figure for the same role in a regional country house. And when the menu itself is built around the harvest rather than the supermarket, the whole approach is covered under Catering built on wild game, where the equipment list tightens to a short list of items that handle variable sizes and a fat that renders at a lower temperature than farm beef.
What counts as catering equipment
Catering equipment covers every machine and appliance whose sole purpose is to prepare or serve food outside a domestic kitchen, and the industry groups it into 4 categories: cooking, refrigeration, storage and service. Cooking includes gas and electric ranges, 60 cm planchas, 100 L soup kettles, combi ovens and roasting spits. Refrigeration covers 50 L trolleys, 400 L undercounter chillers and the 2 to 4 C game larder units used to age wild game for 48 to 72 hours. Storage means stainless steel racking, 6 ply gastronorm containers and 25 L polycarb crates. Service covers 10 seater banqueting tables, chafing dishes, 60 cm pass hatches and the 3 tier trolleys that move hot plates from kitchen to venue. A single country house dinner for 30 guests will call on roughly 18 of these items, while a 200 head corporate function in a durban conference hall might push that to 45.
Buying vs hiring vs renting
To choose between buying, hiring and renting, you weigh 3 variables: purchase price, expected use over 3 years, and storage space. Buying locks in the lowest per use cost once the item has been used more than 40 times; a 12 kW gas plancha at 2 800 GBP paid off over 60 months works out to 46 GBP per month, while the same plancha hired for 12 months at 120 GBP per month costs 1 440 GBP, and rented for a single 3 day event at 95 GBP per day costs 285 GBP. Hiring, sometimes called a service contract, bundles the kit with 12 monthly maintenance visits, a 48 hour response window, and the option to swap a unit for a larger one if the client list grows. Renting, in the strict sense, means a short term rental of 1 to 14 days with a security deposit equal to 50 percent of the hire value. The table below sets out the 3 routes side by side.
| Route | Typical term | Upfront cost | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buy | 5 to 10 years | Full price, 1 500 to 15 000 GBP | Daily use, 300+ covers a year |
| Hire | 12 to 60 months | Deposit, 20 to 50 percent | Growing client base, seasonal peaks |
| Rent | 1 to 14 days | Deposit, 50 percent of hire value | Single events, pop ups, site trials |
Hiring also carries a 12 month minimum in most contracts, which means the first 6 months often break even against a purchase once you factor in the 24 500 GBP of VAT you defer by not paying full price upfront. For a wild game kitchen that cooks 40 covers a week from October to March and 8 covers a week in summer, a 30 kg roasting spit and a game larder cooler are the 2 items where hiring at 85 GBP per month each beats buying at 3 400 GBP outright, because the 5 month off season would otherwise idle the kit in a 12 m2 storage room.
Catering equipment hire in practice
Catering equipment hire is the arrangement where a supplier delivers, installs and collects kit on a schedule you set, and in the UK it is the default route for 60 percent of new food service businesses in their first 24 months. A typical hire agreement in pretoria or in a UK county town covers 5 items: a 1.8 m refrigerated counter, a 12 kW combi oven, a 60 cm pass, a 25 L polycarb crate set of 20, and a 3 tier trolley. The supplier charges a monthly fee that includes gas safe servicing, 2 filter changes per quarter, and a 48 hour loaner unit if the main machine fails. You pay 20 percent deposit, 10 percent of the monthly fee is a damage cover line, and at the end of the 36 month term you return the kit or convert the contract to ownership at 10 percent of the original list price. In pretoria, hire contracts tend to run 24 months because electricity tariffs make long term ownership less attractive, while in a durban suburb where a 200 head function venue books 18 events a year, the same venue will buy the combi oven and rent only the 60 cm pass and the trolleys per event.
Can you rent catering equipment for a single event
You can rent catering equipment for a single event, and the 4 day rental window is the industry standard, with a 1 day setup, 2 days of use and 1 day for collection. A 30 guest wild game dinner in a country barn will need a 1.2 m game larder cooler (38 GBP per day), a 20 kg roasting spit (25 GBP per day), a 60 cm induction hob (18 GBP per day), a 50 L chiller trolley (22 GBP per day) and a 10 seater banqueting set (35 GBP per day), putting the 4 day total at 318 GBP plus a 160 GBP deposit that returns 7 days after collection. Renting works when you cook fewer than 6 times a year, because at that frequency the per event cost undercuts both the 120 GBP per month hire and the 2 800 GBP purchase price. If you cook 8 or more times a year, the 4 day rental at 80 GBP per event stacks to 640 GBP and a 12 month hire at 55 GBP per month comes to 660 GBP, so the crossover sits at roughly 9 events. For a one off stag dinner or a 1 day pheasant shoot in November, renting the 2 spit units and the cooler trolley is the cleanest route, and you collect the kit from the nearest depot, which in a city like durban means a 30 minute drive to the industrial park on the south bank.
Where to find catering equipment near me
Catering equipment near me searches pull up 3 types of supplier, and knowing which one you need saves a week of phone calls. The first is a kitchen fit out company that sells, installs and commissions full ranges, and in the UK there are roughly 140 of these spread across the major cities, with 22 in the south east and 8 in the north west. The second is a hire and rental yard that stocks 40 to 200 units on site, delivers within a 50 mile radius, and carries a 48 hour loaner list; pretoria has 9 of these yards, 6 in the CBD and 3 in the northern suburbs, and durban has 14, concentrated in the Umhlanga and Pinetown corridors. The third is a resale and auction platform where second hand units trade at 40 to 60 percent of list price, and a 60 cm combi oven that costs 11 500 GBP new will appear at 5 800 GBP on a UK auction site with 2 years of service history. If you are near a country estate that shoots, the estate cook will often sell or lend a game larder cooler or a roasting spit at a fraction of the hire rate, and a single phone call to the shoot secretary can put a 30 kg spit on your doorstep for 40 GBP a weekend, a rate that undercuts any commercial rental by 30 percent.
Sizing the kit for a wild game kitchen
Sizing the kit for a wild game kitchen means matching the equipment to the variable size and fat content of game rather than to a fixed menu, and 3 dimensions drive the choice. The first is carcass weight: a red deer hind yields 22 kg of primal cuts, a fallow deer hind 16 kg, and a pheasant 1.1 kg, so a 20 kg roasting spit handles the hind in one go but a 12 kg spit leaves 8 kg of saddle and loin that need a second pass. The second is aging time: wild game needs 48 to 72 hours at 2 to 4 C before trimming, which means a 400 L undercounter chiller is the minimum, not a 200 L, because a single hind plus its accompanying venison paunch and kidney occupies 85 L and you need room for 2 or 3 pheasants at 1.1 kg each. The third is service format: a 24 cover country dinner needs a 60 cm pass with 4 heated shelves to hold 6 plates at 68 C while the next 4 come out of the 30 kg spit, and a 200 head corporate function in a durban conference hall needs a 1.2 m pass with 8 shelves and 2 60 cm chafing dishes running in parallel. A kitchen built for farm beef at 350 covers a day will over spec every item for a 40 cover wild game service, and a kitchen sized for 40 covers will choke on a 100 head venison function, so the hire model, where you scale the kit up or down per event, fits the variable nature of game better than a fixed purchase.