Hospitality
Buy and sell hospitality equipment in Panama.
When a neighbourhood eatery or a café in a Panama plaza changes owner, the stove, the stainless counters and the dining tables often go with the keys, and whatever the new owner does not want gets sold off. Restaurant, bar and hotel equipment is listed here new and pre-owned: cooking and refrigeration, dining furniture, and the steel tables, sinks, pans and buffet gear that hold a kitchen together. Much of it comes from people closing, moving or refitting a business, which is why a prep table can come on its own or as one line in the inventory of a whole kitchen.
Kitchen appliances, dining furniture and the stainless steel in between:
the machines that cook sit under commercial kitchen appliances, with chilling split out into commercial refrigerators and commercial freezers, and the chairs, tables and booths a dining room is judged on are under hospitality furniture. Alongside them goes the kit that never makes the menu photos. A stainless work table or pot sink will outlast most of the appliances standing next to it. Hotel pans and stockpots get sold by the stack when a menu changes, and chafing dishes, which spend most of the year in a cupboard, change hands in sets between caterers.
Stainless tables and sinks, 304 against 201:
the grade of steel decides how long one lasts. Type 304 shrugs off brine, the lime juice in a tray of ceviche and the chlorine it gets wiped down with. The cheaper 201 and 430 grades look the same on the day you buy them, then pit and rust where salt and bleach sit, at the welds and round the drain first. Thickness is the other half, and gauge runs backwards: the lower the number, the thicker the sheet, and a thin top drums under a cleaver and dents under a full stockpot. For a prep line or a pot sink, go for heavy 304. Panama also has metalworkers who build 304 tables and sinks to measure, worth knowing when a used one is almost the length you need.
A small restaurant kitchen taken as one lot:
when a small restaurant is sold on as a going concern, the equipment usually goes with the business, and whatever the new owner does not keep is offered together. A lot is cheaper per piece and saves a dozen trips, but the tired pieces come with the sound ones, so ask for a written inventory and see everything working. Find out too what is fixed to the building: an extraction hood with its ductwork, a grease trap under the floor or a built-in cold room may stay with the premises rather than leave with the seller, and that is better settled before the price than on the day the truck arrives.
Light imported tables and the heavy ones worth waiting for:
a light table with an undershelf, usually in 201 or 430 steel, costs around $100 to $150 new. A heavy 304 table built to measure costs a good deal more, and that is the one to hunt for second-hand: with no motor or compressor to fail, a used one that is flat, square and free of rust keeps most of its value, while a light one already pitting at the welds has very little left to sell.
A used prep table, sink or chafing set, checked in person:
bring a fridge magnet. It grips 430 hard and barely holds on 304, so a strong pull on a table sold as 304 settles the question. 201 is only weakly magnetic and slips past that test, so rust spots at the welds and under the shelf are the better clue. Press on the middle of the top and rock the table by one corner: a top that flexes or legs that wobble at the shelf brackets will not carry a mixer. Run water through a sink and look underneath for drips at the drain basket. With chafing dishes, the lids and fuel holders go missing first, and a set that no longer stacks is a set short.
Clearing a restaurant kitchen before the lease ends:
list the lot with an inventory, one photo per piece and the grade and size of every stainless table, because a buyer is working out whether it fits their line and their door. Say which pieces you will split off, and give the date the premises have to be empty: a buyer who knows the deadline makes an offer, one who does not waits you out. Whoever comes for a whole kitchen in El Cangrejo or Volcán will bring a truck and a couple of helpers, so say whether they can load at the door or have to carry everything down a corridor.