Equipment · Tool
Central kitchen volume, kettle by kettle.
Meals per day in — the reference kettle battery, production rhythm, and chilling capacity out, from Cleveland's own published system guidelines.
The reference system
A starting configuration, not a design. Menu mix decides agitator types, batch schedules move the turns, and the chill side is its own engineering — the drawing conversation runs through your rep and Cleveland's team.
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Asked every week.
What size kettle does a central kitchen need?
Cleveland's published reference systems: 500 to 1,000 meals a day runs on a single 40-gallon tilting kettle at two turns; 3,000 meals on a 60-gallon; 5,000 on paired 100-gallon kettles; and the configurations scale to 30,000 meals a day on a five-kettle battery — all on an 8-ounce-serving basis.
What is cook/chill and when does it pay?
Cooking in volume, chilling fast, and serving over following days — it converts peak cooking labor into scheduled production. The economics generally start working at institutional volume: thousands of meals a day, or a commissary feeding multiple sites.
A tool gets you close. A person gets it right.
Every number here is a starting point, not a quote. Your Zink specialist runs these questions for a living — and checking your math costs you nothing.