Chef Irvine uses Vollrath floor mixers and the results are better than expected

I JUST UPGRADED MY RESTAURANT WITH THE CADILLAC OF FLOOR MIXERS – AND THE RESULTS ARE EVEN BETTER THAN I EXPECTED

These are the three maxims I’ve lived by as a chef and restaurant owner: 1) Keep your knives sharp, 2) Leave plenty of time to prep, and 3) Buy equipment that can take a beating. Most chefs know the first two, but the third one bears repeating. So here’s a little story about what happened when I upgraded one of my restaurants from an old floor mixer to one that’s been touted as the industry’s new gold standard.

The old floor mixer at Fresh Kitchen by Robert Irvine—my restaurant located within the halls of the Pentagon—gave out a few months ago, and as a replacement, we got a 30-quart Vollrath floor mixer. Primarily used to produce our pizza dough, the results, well, pardon the dad joke, they have not been mixed. They’ve been perfectly consistent.

We sell so much pizza at Fresh Kitchen—up to 200 pies per day—that it is impossible to overstate the importance of this machine. It is not enough for the mixer to produce consistent dough batch after batch. Because it is in a state of near-constant use, it needs to be durable, easy to maintain, and easy to clean. The Vollrath is all of that, along with an unexpected twist: it’s the most affordable option in the category, a veritable bargain considering all it can do.

Another added bonus: it’s a sleek, good-looking machine when it doesn’t have to be. As long as you get the job done in the kitchen, most appliances are forgiven for looking like a hulking brute, but no, Vollrath went ahead and made this thing easy on the eyes with a metallic-blue finish on the dome and a smooth, seamless surface that’s more than aesthetically-pleasing—it’s easier to clean, too.

It’s a revelation for me to watch as our Vollrath floor mixer has been producing a steady supply of dough—multiple batches a day, every day, for several months—without a hiccup, and no more maintenance required than the occasional addition of a bit of gear oil.

I’ve been in this business for over 35 years. I’ve made over 300 episodes of Restaurant: Impossible. I’ve been in the best kitchens in the world and the very worst. I’ve truly seen it all, including some things I wish I could forget. In all that time, I’ve learned there are many differentiators between restaurants that fail and succeed, but one of the big ones is this: the greatest restaurants in the world don’t cut corners. The worst ones are constantly cutting corners, and that includes saving money with substandard equipment purchases. Call it the pennywise, pound foolish school of restaurant management. When those owners make the decision to save a little bit of money now, what they’re not realizing is that if a big part of a restaurant’s menu runs through a particular piece of equipment, then a catastrophic failure of that piece of equipment can cripple the whole business. For a lot of owners, this is a no-brainer when it comes to the absolute necessities—ovens, stoves, fryers—but they’ll tighten the purse strings on everything after that, never imagining what it would look like if they had to retask their sous chefs to mix 50 lbs of dough by hand every few hours.

In short, the Vollrath floor mixer hasn’t just given Fresh Kitchen a consistent product, it’s given me and the restaurant’s chefs and managers the kind of peace of mind that you can’t put a price on. The restaurant business is a hugely rewarding one, but it is also notoriously unforgiving. With so many unforeseen variables that you can’t control, like consumer trends and competition, it’s incumbent upon restaurant owners to get a handle on as many other variables as possible. That means avoiding unforced errors and never taking short cuts in your processes or when it comes to outfitting your kitchen with equipment you need to rely on every day. Going forward, my restaurants will always have a Vollrath. Yours should, too.