Commercial electric oven: why it's the best solution for your kitchen

In what aspects are commercial electric ovens better, and what are the areas where gas ovens excel? Let's start with a simple premise. There are different types of commercial ovens, and modern technologies allow electric and gas solutions to achieve comparable cooking performances. The main differences to base your choices on involve installation, kitchen safety, and energy consumption.

Let's take a closer look.

Installing a commercial electric oven is usually easier than installing a gas oven. Why? In most cases, an electric oven only requires the appropriate number of kilowatts available in your kitchen to ensure a simple and quick installation. Additional investments and equipment, such as expensive hoods or ventilation holes for the extraction of combustion products, are not required.

Moreover, a commercial electric oven, even if high-powered, almost never requires modifications to the kitchen system to comply with safety regulations, which is often the case with gas ovens.

Even after installation, a commercial electric oven has advantages over a gas oven.

For example, during peak work times, the gas network must supply stoves, boilers, grills, and ovens. Under these conditions, there may be pressure drops that can cause malfunctions or the activation of safety shutdowns in machines.

On the other hand, once the electrical network is set up, there's no need to worry about anything else.

And even if not all the kilowatts required by the devices are available, Unox electric ovens can easily integrate into an automatic power optimization system. These systems allow machines to operate smoothly without user intervention, while still ensuring expected cooking results.

Commercial electric ovens are significantly more efficient at transferring thermal energy within the oven compared to their gas counterparts. This advantage stems from electricity's ability to convert with an efficiency close to 100% into heat, eliminating energy losses. In gas ovens, heat generation results from a chemical reaction, combustion, which produces hot fumes that are expelled from the oven, causing energy losses and direct CO2 emissions.

In terms of costs, these can vary significantly depending on the region and local energy policies. However, choosing a commercial electric oven over a gas one guarantees a reduction in environmental impact today and in the future.

Let’s make a simple comparison: using a gas oven instead of an electric one is like driving a combustion engine car instead of an electric car.

Every time you drive a combustion engine car, you emit CO2 into the atmosphere, while using an electric car, this doesn’t happen. Clearly, to power your electric car, you will need to use energy, which could be produced from renewable sources or using fossil fuels.

Whether the energy you purchase from the grid is predominantly from renewable sources like solar or wind, or primarily from fossil fuels, the electric oven is always the more sustainable choice.

In 2021, globally, 62% of electricity production came from fossil fuels, while in 2030, it is expected that this percentage will drop to 41% as renewable energy production increases.

This is why, if you purchase an electric oven today, its environmental impact will decrease over time, while a gas oven will continue to emit emissions into the atmosphere every time you use it.

Moreover, choosing to purchase only electric energy from renewable sources from your supplier can immediately eliminate the environmental impact of your electric oven!

Why is an ENERGY STAR® certified commercial electric oven the best choice for reducing your environmental impact? Cooking food is a process that requires a lot of energy. That’s why choosing efficient and sustainable solutions for commercial food service has become more of a necessity than a choice.

ENERGY STAR® is a government program established to encourage manufacturers of a wide range of technologies to consider energy efficiency in the design phase. ENERGY STAR® standards are the methods and set of key performance indicators (KPIs) that our Research and Development teams use daily to measure our progress in reducing the environmental impacts of our products. We work on isolation, motor efficiency, and automatic saving technologies.

The result? Today, we are leaders in the number of ENERGY STAR® certified commercial ovens.

Before diving into which of our ENERGY STAR® professional electric ovens might suit you best, let's see how choosing an electric combi oven can help you save, not only compared to a gas oven but also compared to other commercial equipment.

Why have multiple commercial appliances when you can have an electric oven that can not only replicate their use but do so while saving you energy and space?

Many believe that using pots, steamers, fryers, grills, and other commercial equipment helps save money. But that’s not the case. Cooking with a commercial electric oven reduces heat loss and allows you to waste less energy during cooking processes.

Comparing the performance of an Unox ENERGY STAR® certified electric combi oven with other ENERGY STAR® certified equipment clearly shows that the oven is the most efficient technology.

Electric combi ovens are multifunctional appliances where you can perform roasting as well as steaming, grilling, sous-vide cooking, drying, gratin, browning, high and low-temperature roasts, braising, frying, reheating, not to mention the world of pastry and baking.

With a single multifunctional tool, you can replace multiple (and costly) appliances and expand your menu without sacrificing savings.

This is an aspect not to be underestimated when thinking about your kitchen or laboratory, as it can help not only reduce costs but also save in terms of space.

Optimal kitchen space management can make a difference. Your brigade members can move more freely. The spaces previously occupied can be allocated to other service phases or to the inclusion of other useful commercial equipment and ovens that allow increasing the number of meals served per day. This way, even smaller kitchens can increase their capacity and profits.

All of this in the context of a kitchen that effectively becomes safer, more functional, and ergonomic. What does that mean?

Firstly, the risk of injury is reduced. In a lab or kitchen where space is managed correctly, the risk of collisions, slips, and burns decreases. Additionally, optimized spaces thanks to greater functionality and ergonomics help improve operator productivity and comfort.

What makes Unox commercial electric ovens the best choice for businesses like restaurants, delis, and hotels? In terms of savings, both in space and energy, we have already established that an ENERGY STAR® certified electric oven is the most suitable solution.

Now let’s delve into how the CHEFTOP MIND.Maps™ line ovens are perfect candidates for your kitchen. Our commercial combi ovens can grill, fry, roast, brown, smoke, steam, and more. They adapt to any type of kitchen and are easy to use, even by less experienced staff, thanks to the library of automatic programs available.

The symmetric reversing fans of our electric convection ovens can distribute air powerfully and evenly across each tray, enabling faster and more effective cooking. And with technologies like DRY.Maxi™, you can quickly and effectively remove moisture from the cooking chamber to give your dishes perfect textures, browning, and crispness.

But there’s more. With our new X lines, we’ve taken the technology of our commercial electric ovens to another level with a next-generation operating system, Digital.ID™, and intelligent functions that allow the oven to receive voice commands and listen to operator feedback. Not satisfied with a cooking process? With Individual.CHEFUNOX, you can communicate your preferences to the oven, and it will remember your desired cooking parameters for a dish. In the future, every time you cook that dish, you’ll always get the result you desire!

The automation of these processes and the versatility of our commercial electric ovens can make a difference when it comes to reducing service times and, consequently, allowing chefs to expand their menu without worry.

What makes Unox commercial electric ovens the best for businesses like pastry shops and bakeries is not just the extraordinary cost savings but, as mentioned in the previous section, the quality of performance and the way our ovens are designed to meet the operator’s specific needs.

If, for example, you run a bakery or pastry shop, you might find the best electric oven for your commercial lab among the products in the BAKERTOP MIND.Maps™ line. A top priority in your case will be the need for guaranteed and repeatable cooking uniformity over time. Thanks to functionalities like CLIMALUX™, our electric ovens can ensure precise control of humidity levels in the cooking chamber, crucial for the quality of the final result. Many intelligent functions of our ovens will facilitate your work and help you achieve impeccable cooking results that are repeatable over time.

If you choose an oven from our X lines, you can also count on cutting-edge technologies capable of revolutionizing your lab with the use of artificial intelligence, for example. Our commercial combi oven for pastry shops and bakeries, BAKERTOP-X™, is equipped with an optical sensor that can recognize the food being baked and choose the most suitable cooking program for it.

And if you’re still worried about consuming too much, you can count on SMART.Energy. The intelligent function that monitors your electric oven's consumption and gives you useful suggestions to reduce energy waste.

With us, you can be sure of choosing the most suitable solution for you in complete safety. What does that mean? Choosing to buy a UNOX commercial electric oven will allow you to:

• test the oven for free for a day in your kitchen with Individual Cooking Experience;
• access an extendable warranty up to 5 years;
• enjoy the intelligent technologies and accessories of our ovens;
• access certified support services.

Click the button below to access a complete selection of our best commercial electric ovens. To help you make your choice, we have included sections reserved for specific fields of use.

Discover our electric ovens!