How to Buy Used Catering Equipment Without Getting Burned: A UK Guide

Everybody Gets Burned Once

Nearly every operator has a story. The fridge that ran fine in the unit and gave up in the kitchen. The oven that arrived with no shelves and no runners. The bench that would not go through the door.

None of that is bad luck. It is the same handful of checks missed, over and over, because the kit looked clean and the price looked right. Used catering equipment is the cheapest way to fit out a kitchen in this country, and it stays cheap right up until you buy a machine nobody can get parts for.

This is the order to do it in.

Before You Go and Look

• Measure your own kitchen first. Doorway width, corridor turns, ceiling height, floor to worktop. Write the three numbers on your phone. A machine that does not go in is worth nothing, however good the price is.
• Check the power and the services. Single phase or three phase, the size of the supply, where the gas point is, where the drain runs. Three phase kit in a single phase kitchen is a conversion job, not a plug in. There is a full guide on the difference between three phase and single phase if you are not sure which you have.
• Decide what has to be new. Some things are worth buying used all day long. Others are not. Work through the new versus used decision before you commit, because the answer changes by machine, not by budget.
• Look up the parts situation. A £2,000 machine from a brand with no UK parts network is worth less than a £4,000 one from a maker you can ring on a Friday afternoon. Spares availability is the single biggest thing separating a bargain from a very heavy shelf.

What to Check When You Are Stood in Front of It

• Ask them to run it, from cold. Not warmed up before you arrive. Cold start, full cycle, hear the compressor kick in or watch every burner light and stay lit. Kit that has been left running all morning is hiding a starting fault, and a cold start is the one check a seller cannot stage for you.
• Note the model and serial. Enough to ring a parts supplier and ask what is still available for it. You are not writing a specification, you are checking the machine has a future.
• Open every door and look at the seals. Perished door seals, hinges that have dropped, a door that does not sit square. Cheap to fix on their own, but they tell you how the machine was treated.
• Look where the food touches. Pitting in a well, a cracked pan, a worn bowl, a scored plate. Everything that wears on catering equipment wears where the product goes through it, and that is where a repaint will not hide it.
• Check underneath and behind. Corroded feet, a rotted plinth, a condenser packed with dust and grease. The back of a machine is honest in a way the front is not.
• Ask what is included. Shelves, runners, trays, filters, the fan, the ductwork. On extraction and refrigeration the expensive part often does not come off the wall with the machine.

The Paperwork That Matters

Gas is the one to be strict about. Under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 the duty sits with you as the employer, and HSE guidance for catering and hospitality is plain about who is allowed to touch it: gas work, including inspection and maintenance, is only for a competent Gas Safe registered engineer, and the business doing the work has to be registered too, not just the individual. HSE treats an annual inspection as a reasonable minimum, with the manufacturer's interval taking over if it is shorter.

Two things follow from that when you are buying used. The certificate you will hear called a CP42 covers a commercial catering installation and runs for twelve months, so it belongs to the kitchen it was issued for, not to the machine sat on a pallet. And your mechanical ventilation has to be interlocked with the gas supply, so that if the extraction fails the gas shuts off. HSE is explicit that a manual bypass on that interlock is not acceptable. A cheap gas machine going into a kitchen with no interlock is not a cheap machine. There is more detail in the gas safety guide.

Electrical kit is less dramatic and still worth budgeting for. The duty comes from the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989, the installation is checked by an EICR, typically every three years on commercial premises, and portable appliances in a kitchen get tested far more often than in an office because heat, steam and grease chew leads up. Six months is a common interval for handheld and portable kitchen equipment.

For refrigeration, find out which refrigerant it runs on before you talk about price. Most self contained units are hermetically sealed with a small charge, and hermetically sealed equipment under 10 tonnes CO2 equivalent is exempt from routine F-gas leak checking when it is labelled as such, so you are not walking into a check regime on a typical undercounter machine. What you are walking into is repair cost. Since 2020 virgin R404A cannot be used to service systems charged above 40 tonnes CO2 equivalent, reclaimed and recycled stock is permitted only until 2030, and the UK HFC quota is down to roughly a third of its 2015 baseline this year, which pushes the price of legacy gas one way only. Anyone putting gas into it needs personal F-gas certification and their company needs a company certificate.

Getting It Home

Ask how it is going to travel before you agree the price, because delivery is where a good buy turns into an argument. Heavy kit goes on a pallet, strapped and wrapped, and it needs a tail lift at both ends unless there is a forklift. Refrigeration travels upright and stands for a few hours before power up. Photograph the machine on the pallet before it leaves, and photograph it again when it lands.

The Checklist

• Doorway, corridor and ceiling measured
• Power supply and gas point confirmed
• Machine run from cold in front of you, full cycle
• Model and serial recorded, parts availability checked with a supplier
• Seals, hinges and wear points inspected
• Everything that comes with it agreed in writing
• Gas: Gas Safe registered commercial catering engineer booked, ventilation interlock confirmed
• Refrigeration: refrigerant confirmed and priced accordingly
• Delivery, tail lift and access sorted before money changes hands

Get those nine right and used kit is the best value in the trade. Skip them and you have bought somebody else's problem. Buy well, sell what you are not using, and the kitchen keeps its money: BUY • SELL • SAVE.

Ready to Find Some Kit?

Have a look at what is listed on the CaterBids marketplace. Every listing is UK commercial catering equipment, so there is no wading through domestic gear to find it.