How to choose cookware for a professional kitchen

Before you look at a single pan, look at your menu and your covers. A breakfast-heavy hotel restaurant, an à la carte kitchen and a high-volume catering operation stress cookware in completely different ways. The right range is the one that matches what you actually cook and how many portions you push through service.

Write down the dishes that run every day and the peak number of covers. That list tells you which pan shapes you need and, just as importantly, how many of each - a common mistake is buying one of everything instead of enough of the pans a station burns through.

Aluminium is the workhorse material of commercial cookware for two reasons: it heats quickly and spreads that heat evenly across the base, and it stays light enough to lift, tilt and toss through a long service. Even heating means fewer hot spots, more consistent colour and less food stuck or scorched at the edges.

Olala pans use an aluminium body for exactly this balance of responsiveness and weight. Even heat distribution matters most on frying pans and crepe pans, where a single hot spot shows up immediately in the food.

For most HoReCa work - eggs, crepes, pancakes, delicate fish, fast plating - a non-stick surface earns its place. Food releases cleanly, portions come off intact and pans wipe down fast between covers, which keeps service moving. Every Olala pan has a non-stick cooking surface for this reason.

Non-stick surfaces do need care: use the right utensils, avoid leaving empty pans on high heat for long periods, and clean them gently. Treated well, a non-stick pan pays for itself in speed and consistency across thousands of covers.

No single pan does everything well. A professional range is a set of shapes, each built for a task: a deep, high-sided wok for fast, high-heat stir-frying and large-batch sautéing; a low, flat crepe pan for crepes, pancakes and delicate items that need an easy slide; a general frying pan for searing and everyday service; a shallow sahan for cooking and presenting straight to the table; and a flat pancake pan for even results at volume.

Build your kit around the jobs your kitchen actually does, then add sizes within each shape.

The same pan shape in different diameters lets you match the pan to the portion - a small frying pan for a single egg, a large one for batch cooking on a busy line. Stocking a spread of sizes stops your team reaching for the wrong pan and overcrowding it, which is where even heat and clean release break down.

As a rule, order the sizes your busiest stations use most heavily in the greatest number, and fill in the outliers with fewer units.

Handles take a beating in a commercial kitchen - grabbed, knocked and moved between hob, oven, pass and wash-up hundreds of times a day. A stainless steel handle stands up to that handling and cleaning. Olala pans are fitted with stainless steel handles for this reason.

Cookware only works if it matches your hobs. Induction hobs need pans with a magnetic base; gas and standard electric hobs do not. Olala pans are not induction compatible, so they suit gas and conventional electric ranges. Always confirm your hob type before ordering any cookware, whatever the brand.

Sourcing for a professional kitchen is different from buying a pan at retail. You are buying a range, in quantity, that has to be consistent and re-orderable as pans wear. Working directly with a wholesale supplier means you can spec the shapes and sizes you need, order in the volumes a commercial kitchen goes through, and come back for the same items later.

Olala supplies professional cookware wholesale to hotels, restaurants, cafés, catering companies and distributors across Türkiye and for export, with private-label / OEM production available on request. There is no public price list - send your requirement and we'll come back with a quote.