Commercial Conveyor Toasters

A four or six-slice toaster has to be loaded, pressed and watched, one lot at a time. A conveyor toaster takes a continuous stream of bread instead, with either staff or customers controlling it, and it runs the same way a pizza deck oven does for a pizza line.

Nobody has to adjust the time or the heat for each slice, so bread is less likely to come out burnt at one end of a shift and pale at the other.

Toast is rarely the hard part of a breakfast service. Between eggs and sausages on the griddle and the coffee machine going flat out, a conveyor toaster takes one job off the bench and keeps it off, without someone topping up a toaster between orders.

Heat comes from both sides of the belt, so bread gets the same on each side rather than one side browning first. The belt also moves at a set speed, which is what lets you dial in white bread, rye, wholegrain or waffles and get the same result each time.

Volume first. Work out how much bread has to come out in the busiest fifteen minutes of the breakfast rush, then look at models rated for it — the range runs from around 350 to 500 slices an hour.

After that it is belt speed and heat control, how the bread lands at the other end, and whether the unit switches off when it sits idle. A conveyor toaster is pre-loaded and left to run, so the settings matter more than the controls do.

There is no resetting, no loading slice by slice and no checking the temperature. Bread goes in the entry, comes out the other end into the tray, and the person serving can be doing something else while it does. That is the difference on a busy morning or a lunch rush.

Some models take thicker product, including bagels. Most standard commercial conveyor toasters are built around about 20mm of clearance, which is already thicker than toast-cut bread, and some go to 30mm.

Pastries are better off in something made for them, like a benchtop convection oven or a combi steam oven. Check the clearance on the specification for the model you are looking at, and if you are unsure, contact the team at REO.

Slots suit low to moderate volume, and let you toast one item on demand when someone is at the counter anyway. A conveyor suits a service where bread goes through continuously and nobody has time to watch it.

The crossover is the point where staff start queueing at the toaster. If the slots are full all morning and orders are waiting, go conveyor. If the toaster idles between orders, a regular toaster is doing the job.

Set the belt speed and the heat once and every slice gets the same run through. Many units also start when you load them and switch off after sitting idle, so staff are not adjusting anything between orders.

Toast that comes out the same is toast you are not throwing away, which keeps the bread bill down.

You will see commercial toaster oven conveyor, industrial toaster conveyor and restaurant toaster conveyor used for the same kind of equipment. The name changes with the supplier and the region, not the job it does. Compare models on capacity, construction and the specification on each product page, and check the full commercial conveyor toasters range to see every option side by side.