Most commercial fryer purchases go wrong for the same reason. Someone buys on tank capacity alone. A 20-litre fryer sounds twice as useful as a 10-litre one until peak service hits: two full baskets of frozen chips land in the oil, the temperature drops, and the next thirty seconds decide whether service falls apart.

Tank size matters. It just isn’t the first thing to look at.

The spec that actually matters: recovery time

Recovery time is how long the fryer takes to get back to set temperature after a drop. Put a 1.5 kg basket of frozen chips into a 14-litre electric fryer and the oil plummets from 180°C to around 150°C in seconds. A decent gas fryer claws back that 30°C gap in under a minute. A tired, underpowered electric one takes two or three. Over a six-hour shift that difference shows up as soggy chips, impatient staff, and tables sent food they didn’t love.

You won’t always see recovery time on the spec sheet. What you’ll see instead is input rating — kilowatts for electric, kilowatts or BTUs for gas. As a rough rule: look for at least 1 kW of input per litre of oil for electric, or 2 kW per litre for gas. Below that and the fryer will struggle on anything busier than a slow café service.

Gas or electric

Right now, gas is cheaper to run. A 20-litre gas fryer costs about 60% of what an electric one does over a year of typical pub-kitchen hours, give or take your tariff. That gap narrowed when electricity prices spiked in 2022 and has since widened again.

Gas isn’t a free lunch, though. You need a Gas Safe engineer to install it, an adequate flue, and for most kitchens, gas interlock ventilation. If your site doesn’t already have those in place, the installation bill can easily add £1,500–£3,000 on top of the fryer itself. For a single new fryer in an existing gas kitchen, gas still wins on lifetime cost. For a new-build or a full refit, the maths can flip.

Electric is simpler. Plug into a suitable outlet — most commercial fryers are three-phase, a few smaller ones run on 13A or 32A single-phase — and you’re going. No flue, no combustion air, no gas certification. The trade-off is the running bill and usually a slightly longer recovery time at the bigger tank sizes.

Tank splits

The big decision after fuel is tank layout. There are three patterns:

  • Single tank. One big vat. Cheapest per litre, simplest to clean, but every product shares the same oil. Fry battered fish in the morning and your afternoon chips taste of it.
  • Twin tank. Two independent tanks in one chassis, usually 7–10 litres each. The most useful pattern for a mixed menu. Keep one tank for coated products and one for plain.
  • Split tank. One vat with a baffle. Cheaper than twin tanks but the oils cross over a little when you load heavily. Fine if you’re only splitting to stretch oil life rather than to separate flavours.

Pubs doing battered fish, scampi, breaded chicken and chips on the same menu almost always want twin tanks. A chippy running chips, sausages, fish and nothing else can get away with a single big one.

Filtration — worth it, but not always built in

An oil-filtration system strips breadcrumbs and carbon out of the oil between services. Done properly, it triples oil life. Done badly, or not at all, and you’ll be dumping twenty litres of half-decent oil down the drain twice a week.

Built-in filtration systems are lovely and expensive. For most kitchens, a portable filter trolley that you wheel between fryers once a day does the same job for a quarter of the money. If you’ve got the space for one, buy that before you buy a fryer with filtration built in.

What goes wrong most often

After years of warranty calls, the pattern is dull and predictable:

  1. Thermostats drift after two or three years. Symptom: chips come out either pale or very dark with the same time on the timer. Fix: replace the thermostat, £40–£80 in parts.
  2. Elements burn out on electric fryers that have been run dry, usually because someone walked away from a drain-and-refill. Never turn an electric fryer on without oil in it, even for a second.
  3. Gas pilots fail on older units. Usually a dirty thermocouple, sometimes a blocked pilot jet. Cheap fix, annoying outage.
  4. Door and tank seals leak if you pressure-wash them. Don’t pressure-wash commercial fryers, full stop.

A buyer’s checklist

Before you place an order, get straight answers to these five:

  • What’s the input rating in kW, and what does the manufacturer quote for recovery time at 1 kg of frozen product?
  • Single, twin, or split tank — and does it match the menu you’re actually running?
  • Gas or electric, and is the supply you’ve got big enough?
  • Is there a flue in place if you’re going gas, or do you need one fitting?
  • Who’s doing the install, and are they Gas Safe / NICEIC-approved where they need to be?

Get those five sorted and you’ll avoid the three most common post-purchase regrets. If you want a second opinion on a specific site, the sales desk is happy to talk it through — send us your floor plan and a photo of your consumer unit and we’ll tell you honestly what’ll fit.