It’s not easy owning and operating a business, especially if you’re attempting to manage a Mexican restaurant. When you mention those two words together, people assume that you will have everything you need. They will also assume you only use the freshest ingredients around to make only the best homemade recipes that have been handed down through the generations.

So, a standard has to be met with an undertaking such as this. Here is the complete equipment guide for your Mexican restaurant as you get started to make the best out of your business to ease the stress a bit.

Tortilla Press

One of the most common things you’ll see in Mexican restaurants is a commercial tortilla press. With a tortilla press, you take your dough and place it in the middle, and with one press, you’ve got your fresh tortilla ready to go.

There are also tortilla machines that make tortillas to go like an assembly machine, at almost 800 tortillas per hour.

Tortilla Warmer

If you have someone working on tortillas and making them fresh, then you’ll need to have a place for all these fresh tortillas. When you have a restaurant, you’ll want to invest in a commercial-sized tortilla press. It’s worth it to always have fresh tortillas that you can count on as customers come in throughout the shift.

Vegetable Prep Station

Because everything is fresh daily in Mexican cuisine, the vegetables have to be prepared and ready constantly. You’ll need a vegetable prep station with plenty of BPA plastic bins to stuff all your vegetables in so they can stay cool until they are needed for making dishes. When the cook line is low, they will also need their vegetables replenished, so it’s good to have them readily available.

Cheese Dispenser

There is so much cheese in Mexican cuisine, from crumbling cheese to string cheese, traditional to spicy, and even melted queso that goes on everything.

With this in mind, you’ll need cheese graters, slicers, and even a cheese dispenser that will dispense melted cheese on tap. Of course, this will need to be made ahead of time to ensure that you have enough for your customers if they order it for their chips and salsa or as a part of their meal.

Commercial Food Processor

The one thing that comes to mind when thinking about food processors is salsa. The salsas, mole, and guacamole made in-house at a Mexican restaurant are all made using a food processor due to the sheer volume of customers that frequent the restaurant.

This is an essential piece of equipment for any Mexican restaurant. The chips and salsa alone attract most customers, so it would be an absolute farce without these things on hand.

Blender

If you like Mexican food, you’ll have to try the many cold drinks they serve—not all of them are alcoholic, either. Many daiquiris are very flavorful, with just about any and every tropical fruit you can imagine in some of them. You’ll be thankful you went the extra mile and grabbed one of these succulent drinks with your meal or to go.

Chip Warmers

As your chips are being prepared, you’ll need somewhere to put them. This means that the chips should constantly be in the rotation as you have customers in and out of the store, so you’ll thus need to invest in a chip warmer.

With this, you can store mountains of pre-made chips so that the servers can grab a bowl of chips and some salsa before they take anyone’s order. This helps keep the customer full and happy while more orders are constantly being made. This practice will also ensure that there are always fresh chips available.

Deep Fryer

Without this, there could be no specialty items like the chips that everyone loves, or chimichangas, which are deep-fried burritos.

And let’s not forget the empanadas as a dessert dish that everyone loves so much—or even sopas. Without a deep fryer, it would make it impossible to hold down a Mexican restaurant.

Commercial Range

So much of Mexican cuisine is made on a flat top griddle, but if you’re a substantial-sized restaurant, you’ll want a commercial-size range to have several hands on the grill, getting orders ready left and right. This will expedite the process and make crafting these classic dishes much easier than it would be on a normal range with just one chef.

Char Broiler

For certain dishes like al pastor, it’s essential to char the meat and not just griddle cook it to get that classic grilled taste on your food. That’s the whole reason behind having a char broiler. If you ever order anything grilled, they can cook this up for you too at a moment’s notice if the restaurant has a broiler on standby.

Tamale Steamer

This unique Mexican dish isn’t cooked like the rest of what you might find on the menu. To get a good tamale, it must have a vegetable- or meat-filled center, covered in ground corn meal that is wrapped in corn husks and steamed for a certain amount of time. The result is the tamale, a world-renowned favorite.

Tilt Skillets

These modern marvels are great for cooking up breakfast dishes like eggs. It might also be helpful for making the specialty eggs ranchero. It’s also great for quesadillas, as it allows chefs to cook both sides evenly without burning or oozing cheese everywhere.

Cook and Hold Cabinet

Many dishes can be prepared and ready ahead of time. This is excellent news when you have something handy like a holding cabinet.

With a hold cabinet, you can have more frequently ordered dishes ready to go at a moment’s notice. It will be a good idea to make sure to time and date each of these, just as you would do with all of the prepared ingredients that are made daily.

Rice Cooker

Many Mexican dishes are made with rice, as that is a staple for carbohydrates in Mexican culture. It only makes sense that most Mexican plates include rice and beans, a common fare.

Many South American countries also live on these dishes, so there is a rich history that comes with eating rice as part of the meal. Having a rice cooker will take cooking to the next level by basically automating exactly when and how much rice you can make at one time.

Hopefully, we have covered the complete equipment guide for your Mexican restaurant so that you can have a reference as a guide to everything you should already have, as well as everything you’ll need.