A restaurant kitchen gives you space to spread out, a fixed power supply, and room to fit a hood over whatever you’re cooking on. Take any of that away and put the same menu in a food truck, a market stall, a dark kitchen or a festival pitch. Every equipment choice starts to matter more.

In practice, get the wrong oven for a converted trailer and you’ve bought something that won’t fit through the door, let alone the workflow. A stall with the wrong power supply ends up with a griddle that never reaches temperature. Get the format wrong — countertop where you needed floor-standing, or the other way round — and you’ve either given up worktop space you needed, or bought a unit you don’t have room for. Each small-footprint setup brings its own version of these problems. The right kit depends on which one you’re running.

Food Trucks and Catering Trailers

Space is fixed and non-negotiable in a truck or trailer, and every appliance has to justify its floor space. This section covers where cooking equipment sits within a food truck’s specific constraints. For the fuller build — refrigeration, coffee, hot holding, hygiene compliance — our Food Truck Equipment List UK guide covers the rest of it.

Countertop, Not Floor-Standing

A trailer’s payload and floor area might not always stretch to a floor-standing fryer or oven range. Manufacturers build countertop fryers and griddles with exactly this in mind. A single or twin-tank fryer, a compact griddle, or a countertop oven all sit on a worktop rather than taking up floor space that a trailer simply doesn’t have to spare. It’s a real trade-off — less capacity than a floor-standing equivalent — but for a trailer’s particular setup, it’s usually the only option that fits.

Microwaves are worth including in that same bracket, since they solve a footprint problem rather than adding to one. A commercial microwave runs from a standard 13amp plug. A wall-mounted shelf keeps it off the worktop entirely — a genuine space-saver on a trailer, where every inch of counter matters more than it would in a fixed kitchen.

Ventilation Isn’t Optional

A griddle or fryer produces grease-laden vapour, and that needs proper extraction to meet food safety and gas safety requirements. Exactly what that looks like varies by build and by local authority. It’s worth checking with your Environmental Health Officer, a qualified installer, and a Gas Safe registered engineer holding a commercial mobile catering qualification for gas appliances — and doing that before committing to equipment, rather than after.

Hood manufacturers do make compact, low-profile canopies sized specifically for trailers and food trucks for this reason. A vented combi oven can go in under one on the same basis as a griddle or fryer, provided the hood’s sized to cover it. That’s a different category of hood entirely from the fixed-building systems mentioned later for dark kitchens.

A ventless oven like the Merrychef conneX 12e is a self-contained cooking chamber with its own catalytic filtration. It runs off a standard 13amp plug, so it needs no ductwork at all. It cooks, grills, toasts and reheats. It’s not a substitute for a fryer or griddle, though. If chips or open-plate grilling are on the menu, that equipment still needs its own vented hood.

Power Supply: Electric or Gas

Power supply comes down to what the truck’s setup can actually support. Both electric and LPG have a place in mobile catering. The right choice depends on the truck’s generator capacity, the menu, and what’s already on board. A single-tank fryer like the Infernus INF-10L plugs straight into a 13amp socket from £130, with twin-tank versions from around £220. The single-tank runs off one 13amp plug; twin-tank models typically need two, so it’s worth checking the trailer has enough sockets to match, not just enough generator capacity.

LPG griddles and fryers run from a propane cylinder instead of mains electricity, taking the load off the generator entirely. That’s why LPG is common in mobile catering, particularly where several pieces of heat-generating equipment are running at once. Most cooking equipment sold for restaurants has an LPG equivalent built for exactly this. Either way, check the amp rating and gas connection against what the vehicle can actually supply. A generator that runs one appliance comfortably can trip under two.

A Brief Word on Layout, Weight and Refrigeration

Layout matters more in a truck or trailer than in other locations. For instance, a galley layout puts the cook line along one wall, with the prep counter, undercounter fridge and handwash basin built into the same worktop run rather than standing apart — any business handling raw ingredients needs one within reach. That keeps the distance between fridge, griddle, basin and pass as short as possible.

Weight is worth raising with whoever’s fitting out the trailer. The company or individual doing the conversion can advise on weight distribution and its effect on the chassis and handling, plus the specifics that apply to a towed trailer, such as speed and stability.

Refrigeration takes up the same worktop and weight budget as the cooking equipment above, so it’s worth choosing the two together. Our Food Truck Equipment List UK guide covers refrigeration in full.

Market Stalls and Street Food Pitches

Power or gas provision varies by pitch — some organised markets supply an electric hookup, sometimes capped at a set kW limit, while others provide nothing at all. It’s worth confirming what’s available, and at what capacity, before assuming either way.

Countertop is the most realistic format here too, but for a different reason than on a trailer. Stallholders pack the whole setup away and put it back up again, sometimes daily. Anything floor-standing is simply impractical to move twice a day. Go for something you can actually carry — a manageable weight with proper handles beats a few extra kilos of output. A unit that’s brilliant on paper but awkward to lift into a van isn’t as much fun by the third market of the week.

Gas or Electric?

Whether to run on LPG or electric comes down to what the pitch actually offers. Gas griddles come specifically in LPG format, connecting straight to a cylinder rather than a building’s gas supply. That’s a straightforward option where a pitch has no electric hookup, or where the hookup’s capacity doesn’t stretch far enough. The same applies to bain maries, chip scuttles and boiling rings. Where a pitch does supply power, countertop electric equivalents are worth considering too, provided the socket can cover the load. A stall selling burgers or breakfast items typically only needs one or two pieces of cooking equipment rather than a full line. It’s worth resisting the urge to over-buy. A single well-chosen countertop griddle or fryer usually outperforms two smaller units competing for the same limited supply.

Baked potato ovens are worth a mention here too — a classic single-item stall menu, high margin. They come in both electric and gas versions, depending on what the pitch offers. Where there’s a 13amp socket, models like the King Edward Vista 25 plug straight in. Where there isn’t, gas potato ovens run from the same cylinder as the rest of the stall.

Dark Kitchens and Delivery-Only Units

Neither a dark kitchen nor a delivery-only unit has counter service or a dining room. That changes the brief in a useful way: every square foot goes on production rather than presentation. And unlike a truck or a stall, the site itself doesn’t move — which opens up options.

More Room to Work, Within Limits

Floor-standing equipment becomes a realistic option here, since there’s no daily pack-down working against it. That matters more than it sounds.

Quick-service operations with little or no dine-in space still run serious floor-standing kit — multi-bank fryers, large griddles, high-output ovens. The volume passing through the kitchen demands it, not the customers sitting in front of it. A dark kitchen or delivery-only unit running several menus back to back is closer to that model than to a traditional restaurant’s lunch-and-dinner peaks. The equipment needs to match.

That said, a fixed site doesn’t automatically mean unrestricted ventilation. Many dark kitchens and delivery-only units occupy converted spaces — old retail units, disused restaurants — rather than purpose-built commercial kitchens. So the building itself can still limit what’s achievable. Because of that, countertop and floor-standing are usually both genuinely on the table here, unlike a truck or a stall, where countertop can be close to the only option. The choice comes down to output needs and what the site can support, rather than the format ruling anything out upfront. Several menus sharing one kitchen means constant use rather than the lunch-and-dinner bursts of a normal restaurant, so it’s worth checking equipment against its rated duty cycle (how much continuous running the manufacturer says it’s built to handle) rather than assuming any commercial unit will cope.

Pop-Ups and Festival Catering

Pop-ups and festival pitches sit somewhere between the other three — temporary like a stall. But they often serve higher volumes over a single intense weekend rather than a steady daily trade.

Countertop isn’t the given here like it is on a stall. Caterers usually set up a festival or event pitch once for the duration rather than packing it away daily. The higher volume of a festival weekend often justifies the extra output floor-standing brings. Floor-standing LPG fryers are genuinely common at events for this reason. Running on bottled gas means output isn’t limited by whatever power the site can supply, which matters where that supply is limited or absent. Where a site does offer a stronger electrical supply, or the event’s shorter and doesn’t justify the extra kit, a countertop twin-tank fryer or a wider griddle still packs down like any other piece of mobile kit. The same logic applies to potato ovens: a baked potato oven is as much a festival and Christmas market staple as a stall one, and the electric-or-gas choice comes down to what the site actually provides.

Budget matters more here than almost anywhere else, since the equipment often needs to earn its cost back over a handful of events rather than months of steady service. Graded and reconditioned equipment is worth a serious look for this reason. A well-specified fryer or griddle at a reduced price makes far more sense for occasional outdoor events than a full-price unit that spends most of the year in storage.

Getting the Power Supply Right

Every one of these setups comes back to the same question before anything else: what power or gas is actually available on site, and does the equipment on your shortlist match it?

Electricity

Here’s roughly how it works: a standard UK socket runs at 230V and 13amp, capping it at just under 3kW. Add up the running wattage of everything you’d run at once. Check that total against what your generator or hook-up can actually sustain. Most generator suppliers will help with this as part of the hire. It’s worth asking them specifically about motor-driven equipment like fridge compressors, which draw more power on startup than they do once running.

Gas

Gas works on the same rough principle in reverse — the bottle’s stated capacity against the appliance’s consumption gives a ballpark burn time. But the figure that matters more for anyone running several appliances hard at once is the bottle’s draw-off rate. That drops in cold weather, so it’s worth raising with your gas supplier or a Gas Safe registered installer before an event.

Single-Phase or Three-Phase

Single-phase and three-phase equipment aren’t interchangeable either. Getting it wrong after delivery is an expensive mistake to unpick. All of this is worth checking against the right source rather than a rule of thumb alone. [Read our commercial catering equipment power supply guide here]

Final Thoughts

Both new and graded or professionally reconditioned equipment have their place. The right choice comes down to budget, availability and how you’ll use the equipment, rather than the setup type alone. New equipment gives the widest choice of exact specifications, and it’s readily available to order — that matters most where a menu or workflow has very specific requirements. Graded or reconditioned equipment puts a higher-specification unit within reach at a lower price, though stock varies and availability can move quickly. A graded TurboChef ECO ventless rapid-cook oven is a good example — it’s currently listed with the same catalytic ventless operation and 13A plug-in simplicity as the new model.

There’s no single answer to what a small-footprint kitchen needs. A food truck, a stall, a dark kitchen and a festival pitch are four genuinely different problems wearing the same “mobile catering” label. What they share is a set of questions worth asking before anything else. What power or gas is actually available? How much space and weight capacity do you have? Is there access to water, and does the equipment ever need to move?

Get those right, and the rest of the decision — ventless or vented, countertop or floor-standing, new or reconditioned — usually falls into place on its own.

Call 01379 641223 and we’ll help you find what you need.