On 1/13/2020 at 7:59 PM, Tri2Cook said:
I assume these wouldn't be full size ovens in width and depth with just less vertical space or they wouldn't be much cheaper to run. They would probably be more costly to run once you were running more than one. The problem, outside of buying and wiring a bunch of single shelf ovens, is that you have a bunch of single shelf ovens. So you either have them all on or you hope you aren't busier than what you have on can handle or you're waiting (which means your customers are waiting) for additional ovens to heat when it's busier than anticipated. Even if it's a single unit with multiple independently controlled single shelf ovens built into it, that would only solve he wiring difficulty... the other problems would remain.
These ovens would be built with the similar principal to rack servers, which are super easy to install, and are designed to live with each other in a special rack cabinet/shelf, that has electricity. The ovens could also have gas and/or water, to support different types of ovens.
The problem you describe about having them all or none is a bigger problem the bigger each unit is, so it's actually an argument for many small ovens. E.g. Kitchen A has two big ovens and kitchen B has 10 small ones. Kitchen A has only two possible setups, to match the demand: one or two ovens, and will be wasting a lot of energy until both ovens are completely in use, whereas Kitchen B has 10 different setups, and can scale up as needed. Typically the demand escalates slowly (if nothing else because service will be a bottleneck), why the chefs can constantly be a bit ahead, and have say 2 extra ovens fired up, which the chefs in kitchen A are much less able to do. They will also have to wait a lot longer for one big oven to fire up, vs many small ones.
These "rack ovens" can be as wide and deep as a big oven. The main difference is the cavity height.
