Catering Equipment Rentals / Cooking Equipment Rentals
Cooking equipment rentals for a kitchen that does not exist yet
Cooking equipment rentals turn a lawn, a field or a parking lot into a working kitchen for one day. Grills, ovens, burners, fryers, prep surfaces and refrigeration, plus the power, water and space that have to be there before any of it is worth loading on a truck.
Most people reading this page are caterers, so it is written for them. If you are the host, the short version is that your caterer tells us what the menu needs and we tell you what the property can support.
Back of house
Building a kitchen where there is no kitchen
An off-premise cook line is a building assembled in a morning and taken apart that night. It has to do everything a kitchen does: hold food cold, bring it up to heat, finish it, plate it and pass it to service, with people working shoulder to shoulder. What it does not have is anything a kitchen provides for free. No outlets on the wall. No hood over the range. No sink. No floor that can be hosed down.
So the equipment list is the second question. The first is what the site can give you. An estate lawn with one outdoor outlet and a long carry from the driveway is a harder cook line than a flat lot behind a venue, and that changes the menu as often as it changes the equipment.
The line
What a cook line is built from
Grills
Open grilling for volume, from single units to long runs. The most site-dependent thing on the list, because of smoke and heat.
Ovens
Finishing, roasting and holding trays in sequence. Usually the piece that decides how many covers a line can turn out.
Burners and ranges
Open burners and stockpot stoves for sauces, pasta water and anything worked in a pan on site.
Rotisseries
Slow cooking in view of guests, which makes them equipment and decor at once. They want a spot that reads well and still works.
Fryers
Concession menus, food stations and anything crisp to order. Oil handling is part of the plan, not an afterthought.
Prep tables
Stainless work surfaces, the least glamorous and most requested item here. A line short on table space stops moving.
Refrigeration
Cold storage on site, sized to how long food waits and how far the truck is parked.
Washing and waste
Somewhere to wash hands and pans, and somewhere for waste to go. Both are site questions before they are equipment ones.
Start from the menu
Cook line builder
Pick the kind of service you are running. Each one returns the line that style is built from, what it draws, and what the site has to give you before it works.
The line
Grills as the spine, with prep tables either side, a holding cabinet for finished product and cold storage close enough to load from without leaving the line.
What it draws
Mostly fuel rather than electricity, so the draw sits in the fuel your grills are set up for. Power is still needed for refrigeration, holding and lighting over the line.
What the site must give
Open air or an open-sided cover, clear space around the heat, firm level ground, and a position where smoke drifts away from guests rather than through the tent.
The line
Ovens and burners for finishing, holding cabinets to stage courses, and a long unbroken run of prep table used as a plating pass at service time.
What it draws
The heaviest electrical load of the four. Ovens, holding cabinets and refrigeration all run at once, which usually means dedicated distribution rather than a house circuit.
What the site must give
Cover over the line, level flooring underfoot, light bright enough to plate under, and enough width that plates can be run out without crossing the cooking side.
The line
Fryers with a landing surface beside each one, prep tables for batching, and holding for anything that leaves the oil before it is served.
What it draws
Fuel or power depending on the units, plus a plan for hot oil at the end of the night. Used oil does not go into the ground or the drain.
What the site must give
Flat, firm ground with no slope, clear space around each unit, and distance from anywhere guests queue or children run past.
The line
Refrigeration and ice as the spine, prep tables for assembly, and little or no hot equipment. The shortest line of the four, and the one people underestimate.
What it draws
Steady power all day for refrigeration, which has to run from load-in rather than from the start of service. Ice supply is the other running cost.
What the site must give
Shade over the whole line, power that does not get switched off between setup and service, and a short route to the passing point or the bar.
The flow
Prep, cook, plate, service, in that order and in that direction
A cook line is a corridor with a direction of travel. Food moves one way, empty trays and waste move the other, and nobody crosses the middle.
Prep
Tables, cold storage and a wash point, set furthest from guests. This end needs the most space and gets the least attention on a site plan.
Cook
Grills, ovens, burners and fryers in a run, with working room behind and clear space around the heat. The noisiest and hottest part of the site.
Plate
A pass at the end of the cook run, lit well enough to see a plate. This is where a line that is one table short falls apart.
Service
The hand-off to the room, either to servers or onto a holding line feeding a buffet. Short, direct, and never back through the cooking.
Site services
The four things a cook line needs from the property
These get settled at the site survey. Every one of them is easier to solve two weeks out than on the morning.
| What it needs | Why it matters | What we need to know |
|---|---|---|
| Power and fuel | Refrigeration, holding and lighting run on electricity all day, while most cooking equipment runs on its own fuel. | Which pieces are electric, what the site has, and whether generator and power rentals have to cover it. |
| Air and clearance | Heat, smoke and steam have to go somewhere, and equipment needs space around it that stays clear during service. | What you are cooking, which pieces make open heat, and what the venue or town requires around them. |
| Water and washing | Hands, pans and surfaces need water, and there is rarely a tap where the line wants to stand. | Whether the property has a water point in reach, and what you bring for washing. |
| Ground and cover | Equipment has to sit level and stay level, and a cook line in the rain stops being one. | The surface under the line, the slope, and whether the cover comes from us or the venue. |
Separation
Keep the cook line away from the party
A working kitchen is loud, hot and busy. Pans land on steel, people call across each other, and a grill run throws heat and smoke wherever the wind takes it. None of that belongs next to a seated table, and none of it belongs near children.
The answer is a back-of-house position apart from the guest area, screened from view, with its own route in from the driveway so staff never cross the party. On a tented site that often means a second smaller structure for the kitchen, which is why the cook line and the tent rentals plan get drawn on the same page.
Noise and heat
Far enough that a table hears the band and not the pass, and upwind of nothing the guests are sitting in.
Its own way in
A route from the driveway that never crosses guest traffic, wide enough for a hand truck at speed.
Out of sight, in reach
Screened from the room but close enough that plates arrive hot. Those two pull against each other, which is the whole layout problem.
Before the quote
Four things to send us and the quote comes back right the first time
The menu
Not a description, the actual list. Which items are cooked on site, which arrive finished, and which have to be fired to order. That alone settles most of the equipment.
The cover count
How many plates, and whether they go out at once or across a long service. The same menu for two hundred seated is a different line from two hundred grazing.
The service times
Load-in, when the line has to be cooking, and when it has to be cold and packed. Those hours set what has to run all day and what only runs for two.
What you are bringing
Most caterers arrive with their own pans, knives, smallwares and sometimes a piece of equipment they will not work without. Tell us, and we stop quoting it.
What moves the number
What sets the size of a cook line order
The menu sets the cooking equipment. The cover count and the service window set how much of it and how much holding sits behind it. The site sets the rest: whether power has to be brought in, whether the line needs a structure over it, whether flooring goes down, and how far the crew carries equipment from the truck.
We own our equipment and run our own crew out of Holtsville, so the cook line, the structure over it, the flooring under it and the power behind it come on one quote and one install sequence. That matters more back of house than anywhere else, because the kitchen is the first thing in and the last thing out.
Browse and build your list
Cooking equipment in the rental catalog
Grills, ovens, burners, rotisseries, fryers, prep tables and refrigeration, bookable with the structure, flooring and power that go around them.
Cooking equipment
From Google reviews
On events built on open ground
"TGIF handled my event in the Hamptons, and I needed everything to look elegant without becoming too expensive. They delivered exactly what I was looking for."
"We rented our tent from TGIF for our backyard wedding, and it was one of the best decisions we made. We weren't sure a tent would work around our pool, but Mike reassured us that his team could make it happen. He was quick to answer every question, and the setup team was prompt and professional. Highly recommend!"
Straight answers
What caterers ask before they book a line
Send the menu, not the wish list
Tell us what you are cooking and where you have to cook it
We will build the line around the menu and the property, flag what the site cannot do before it becomes a problem, and put the cover, the flooring and the power on the same quote.