Whether you’re simply relocating or starting up your own restaurant business, you’ll need to move valuable kitchen equipment. However, since there are often large, bulky, units in a commercial kitchen, they can be difficult and often dangerous to move. Below, we’ll be going over all the steps this moving company in Charlotte says you need to take to pack up and move your commercial kitchen properly.
1. Disconnect the Appliances
Before you move anything, it’s important that you properly disconnect all your kitchen appliances. If you don’t, you increase your risk of electrocuting yourself or suffering from burns, radiation, fire, and other hazardous conditions that you can easily prevent.
However, once your appliances are properly disconnected, make sure you give your equipment plenty of time to cool down before moving them. Even your freezers need time to reach cool down, or else you may cause injury to yourself or the machinery. It’s also important that none of your kitchen appliances have food still inside of them. Food that’s still inside of your equipment could either spoil or result in damaged machinery once you finish moving it.
2. Clean and Pack
After disconnecting all of the appliances, you should thoroughly clean off every piece. Wipe down all of the surfaces, inside and out. You should also remove any pieces that are not attached to the equipment, like shelves and trays. These items can move around in the moving truck, damage your equipment, and render it unusable. So, it is better to be safe and simply remove these pieces ahead of time.
You will also want to pay special care to any small appliances you are bringing with you. Small, sharp objects like knives and grinders should be wrapped up safely and labeled accordingly. For mixers, blenders, and other appliances with multiple moving parts separate each piece and wrap it individually.
3. Wrap It Up
Before moving any equipment into the moving truck, shrink-wrap everything with plastic moving wrap. Doing this can help to keep doors and drawers in place when on the move. The wrap can also help to protect your equipment from exterior scratches and prevent dirt from entering the interior through any gaps.
4. Be Careful When Lifting
When moving large and expensive equipment, you will want to take extra care. Even if you have a large team of helpers, you may need to use specialized tools to ease the load. These may include forearm lifting straps and appliance dollies. Also, ensure everyone lifts the kitchen equipment with their legs and not with their backs. This will prevent any injuries from occurring to your or your moving team.
Moving a commercial kitchen is no easy task, but with the right guidance, it can be completed easily. Hopefully, with the help of this guide, you could get a better understanding of how to pack up your commercial kitchen with little risk of injury or machinery damage.