01The four commercial types
Almost every commercial enquiry lands in one of these four. They differ mainly in what the edge and the underside have to do.
| Type | What it has to do | Typical plate | Detail that matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pass counter | Take plated food, hot pans, constant wiping | 8–10 mm | Front edge comfort for staff leaning on it |
| Prep bench | Chopping, trays, impact | 6–8 mm | Underside bracing and leg fixing positions |
| Bar top | Liquids, glassware, elbows | 8–10 mm | Spill containment at the back edge |
| Service / wash area | Water, chemicals, sanitising | 6–8 mm | Welded joints, no silicone bead |
Thickness in commercial work is about impact and span, not about looks. A 6 mm top on legs at 1200 mm centres will ring under a dropped tray; the same plate on a braced frame at 800 mm centres will not.
02The other commercial job: fitted pantry runs
Not every commercial enquiry is a pass counter. The larger volume in most export markets is the office floor: a run of units per floor, a sink, a cooler, a place to put a cup. It is quoted by the wall rather than by the unit, and the failures are different from a kitchen's — not hygiene write-ups, but services that were not drawn and panels that were cut to fit on site.
Both frames are ours and both are from our stand, which is worth saying plainly rather than letting the photographs imply a reference job we did not do. Neither is a plate pass counter; what they show is the part that carries over to commercial work of any size — a bowl that will not work loose, and a deck that was set out around the functions standing on it rather than cut to fit afterwards.
On a commercial job this is where the variation order comes from. If the cooler, the filter and the hydrant are not on the drawing, they get cut in during the fit-out, and the cost of that lands on whoever is holding the programme. We would rather price the voids than argue about them later; the project photographs page shows the same wall open and closed, which is what a drawn void looks like once it is built.
03Hygiene is a joint problem, not a material problem
Every food-safety framework in our markets — EU 852/2004, FSANZ in Australia and New Zealand, most US state codes — asks roughly the same thing: surfaces smooth, impervious, non-toxic, and able to be cleaned. Solid stainless plate satisfies that on its own. What fails inspection is where two surfaces meet.
- Wall junction. A folded upstand welded or sealed with a coved fillet beats a flat top butted to a wall with a bead of silicone.
- Top-to-top joints. Welded and dressed flush is cleanable; a butt joint with a gasket is a bacterial line and a torch will find it.
- Leg and frame fixings. Any fastener that penetrates the top has to be sealed or avoided; bolts through the surface are the classic write-up.
- Corners. Internal corners need a radius, not a welded right angle. Dirt sits in a sharp internal corner no matter how well it is welded.
Send the plan with the joints marked — wall, top-to-top, upstand — and we will price the welded version against the sealed version so you can see what the hygiene detail costs before you commit.
04304 or 316L — decided by what touches the top
Most commercial kitchens are 304 and stay 304 for twenty years. 316L appears where chlorides concentrate: heavy sanitiser use, brine, dairy, seafood, laboratories, and coastal sites where the air itself carries salt.
| Exposure | Grade | Why |
|---|---|---|
| General kitchen, cooked food | 304 | Adequate PREN for normal cleaning |
| Brine, seafood, dairy, high sanitiser | 316L | Molybdenum resists chloride pitting |
| Laboratory, chemical | 316L | Wider chemical resistance |
| Coastal, salt air | 316L | Pitting at scratches is the failure mode on 304 |
| Budget fit-out, dry area | 304 | 316L adds cost without adding life |
PREN — pitting resistance equivalent number — is the number behind that table: %Cr + 3.3×%Mo + 16×%N. Typical 304 lands near 19, typical 316L near 24. That gap is what you are buying. We cut 304 as standard and 316L on request, with price and lead time confirmed on the quote.
05Load, span and why the top rings
A countertop deflects. The question is by how much, and whether anyone notices. For a uniformly distributed load, deflection goes with the fourth power of the span — double the span between supports and the same plate sags sixteen times as far.
| Plate | 600 mm span | 900 mm span | 1200 mm span |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 mm | 0.4 mm | 1.4 mm | 3.3 mm |
| 6 mm | 0.2 mm | 0.8 mm | 1.9 mm |
| 8 mm | 0.1 mm | 0.3 mm | 0.8 mm |
| 10 mm | 0.05 mm | 0.2 mm | 0.4 mm |
Indicative values for a simply supported strip at 200 GPa; use them to see the shape of the problem, not as a design calculation. The practical reading: under about 1 mm nobody notices, over about 2 mm the top starts to feel soft and liquids pool. If your span is long, the cheaper fix is a brace at mid-span, not a thicker plate.
06What a commercial quote needs
Commercial jobs are quoted from a schedule more often than from a drawing, which is fine as long as the schedule carries the four things that change the price: plate thickness, edge detail, joint method, and whether legs or a frame are in scope.
Tell us also whether the site is going to be inspected under a named standard, and whether the installer needs the tops in one piece or is happy to joint on site. Those two answers change the build more than the colour of anything.
Send a drawing or schedule · Industrial and lab benches · Sink joints