The FOG Tank®: Efficient Commercial Catering Kitchen Equipment

Our Catering Soak Tanks Save Money On Water, Chemicals, Labor, and Energy

A catering kitchen rarely looks the same two days in a row. One night it’s cleanup after a two hundred person wedding, and by morning it’s loading vans for a corporate breakfast across town. Whatever comes back from an event, hotel pans and chafers included, carries the grease and scorched sauce from the last job, and there’s rarely a good stretch of downtime to scrub it all off by hand before the next one starts. That’s where The FOG Tank® comes in: a heated soak tank built to handle commercial catering kitchen equipment and cookware without tying up your crew.

Load dirty metal or heavy-duty plastic cookware and equipment into the tank, and Tiger Carbon Removal Powder goes to work on the fat, oil, grease, and carbon while your team moves on to prep. The same fill of water and powder holds its cleaning power for a full month, cutting down what your kitchen spends on water, chemicals, labor, and electricity along the way.

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The concept of a culinary buffet dinner catering comes to life as a group of people gather in a restaurant, enjoying an all-you-can-eat spread of meat, vegetables, and other delectable food options.

A Few Of Our Satisfied Customers

Cut Costs Every Month With The FOG Tank® Catering Soak Tanks

Four things drive most of what a catering kitchen spends every month, and The FOG Tank® cuts into all four at once to save you money.

Less Water: Hotel pans and chafers don’t get any cleaner from a quick rinse once the grease has set in, so a three-compartment sink ends up drained and refilled again and again over a busy week. The FOG Tank® breaks that cycle. Fill it once, and it keeps working through the next event (and many others after that) before it needs to be refilled a month later, which could save you over 340,000 gallons of water each year.
Less Cleaning Chemicals: One batch of Tiger Carbon Removal Powder covers The FOG Tank® for a month, no matter how many events come through in that stretch. Compare that to a sink basin that needs a fresh dose of degreaser every time it’s used, and a kitchen running several bookings a week ends up buying a lot less cleaner over the course of a year.
Less Labor: Somebody on staff used to be the one standing at a sink chipping burnt sauce off a roasting pan between events. With The FOG Tank®, that job disappears. Cookware and equipment goes in the tank and soaks on its own, freeing that person up to help with prep, packing, or whatever the next booking actually needs, saving half an hour or more on average daily.
Less Electricity: Reheating a sink full of cold water every time a crew gets back from a job pulls power your kitchen doesn’t need to spend. The FOG Tank® sidesteps that because it’s fully insulated stainless steel that holds its temperature between soaks instead of starting from scratch each time, which could reduce energy costs by $3,000 or more per year.

For anyone who has never used one, it's a game changer! Especially if you're high volume. I don't usually engage with advertising posts, but literally anything with build up can go in - sheet trays, pots, pans, hotel pans, oven racks, salamander racks, vents, fry baskets, tongs, grill weights, etc. Even super built up stuff that's coated in black goes in at close and the opener pulls them out. We have a weekly schedule so there's always something in it and it pays for itself by making your equipment and small wares last longer. Had the same one since well before I started 7 years ago and it's still going strong.
Cynthia Marble Gill

How Our Commercial Catering Kitchen Equipment Works

FILL

Fill the FOG Tank® with (preferably hot) water to the ‘Fill Line’ marked on the inside, plug the tank into an electrical outlet, and push the ON button.

Person pours Tiger Carbon-Removal Powder into a FOG Tank

ADD

Slowly add the Tiger Carbon-Removal Powder.

Person adds dirty kitchen equipment to the FOG Tank

LOAD

Load the soak tank with your dirty pots, pans, vent hood filters, etc., using the ‘lifting basket’ that is housed inside the FOG Tank®.

Close the lid, leaving the items in the tank to soak, and walk away!

REMOVE

Remove the items from the tank, then simply rinse off any loose or softened carbon fragments. Any items removed from our kitchen soak tanks will be clean and fully sanitized.

Every event a catering company runs sends a load of dirty cookware and equipment back to the kitchen at once, sometimes late at night after the last guest has gone home. Grease and scorched sauce don’t wait for a convenient time to get scrubbed off, and a three-compartment sink can only handle a pan or two at a time before it needs to be drained and refilled. Piling everything into a heated soak tank instead means the whole load gets attention together, without anyone standing at the sink working through it piece by piece.

Once your dirty items are in the water, The FOG Tank® takes over: a steady 185° F combined with Tiger Carbon Removal Powder breaks down fat, oil, grease, and carbon without anyone scrubbing or standing by. Loading it takes three easy motions (scrape off loose debris, set the piece in the lifting basket, and lower it in), simple enough that any staff member can pick it up on their first shift. Stainless steel, aluminum, and other metal cookware and equipment used in catering all hold up fine in the tank, with no pitting or discoloration to worry about afterward. Once the cycle finishes, a quick rinse is all that separates a soaked pan from one that’s ready to go back in the van.

6 Features That Make The FOG Tank® Easy And Effective for Caterers

Overhead view of a clean metal pan, cast iron pan, and metal sheet pan

Fully Insulated & Thermostatically Controlled

Because The FOG Tank® is fully insulated, the thermostat only has to maintain 185° F rather than fight to regain it, which keeps your energy bill in check even when the tank runs unattended overnight in an empty commissary.

Proprietary Cleaner

What sets Tiger Carbon Removal Powder apart from an everyday degreaser is that it handles scorched sauce and grease buildup without any caustic chemicals doing the work. Since it’s biodegradable and safe on food contact surfaces, your commercial catering kitchen equipment and cookware comes out of the tank ready for a quick rinse and nothing more: no soaking in a second chemical, no worrying about residue before the next event.

304 Stainless Steel Build

304 stainless steel makes up the tank itself, which matters because it’s the same grade most of your hotel pans and chafers are already built from. Daily hot soaking doesn’t warp or corrode The FOG Tank® any more than it would the cookware and equipment going in and out of it.

Lifting Basket

With our built-in lifting basket, nobody on your team needs to reach into 185° F water to load or retrieve items. Set dirty items in the basket and lower it into the water, then raise the basket out of the water and rinse items when they’re done.

Fill Line

Water goes in up to a clearly marked line, so whoever’s refilling The FOG Tank® that month gets the ratio right without measuring anything by hand.

Multiple Sizes

A solo caterer working out of a shared kitchen space has different needs than an events company running multiple crews on the same weekend, but The FOG Tank® can meet them all. Our tank sizes start at 25 gallons and top out at 126 gallons, big enough to keep pace with a full calendar of bookings.

A lined up catered buffet is prepared for incoming guests.

What Exactly Can The FOG Tank® Clean for a Caterer?

Whatever cookware or equipment made of metal or heavy-duty plastic that comes back from an event can go straight into The FOG Tank®. That includes the vent hood filters back at your commissary, which makes this one of the more complete pieces of commercial catering kitchen equipment you can bring into a busy kitchen.

Hotel pans (steam table pans)
Chafing dish inserts
Sheet trays
Stock pots and sauce pots
Vent hood filters
Fry baskets
Cutting boards
Cambro containers
Other metal or heavy-duty plastic items

If it survives a night of transport and comes back covered in fat, oil, grease, or carbon, there’s a good chance it belongs in a heated soak tank instead of a sink.

Keeping Hood Filters Ready For Inspection Between Events

A commissary turning out food for two or three events in the same week runs its fryers and ranges hard, and grease vapor from all that cooking settles straight onto the hood filters overhead. Left alone, that layer gets thick enough to slow airflow and dark enough that anyone walking through can see it hasn’t been cleaned in a while.

Most catering kitchens handle this by pulling hood filters at the end of a shift and soaking them in whatever sink isn’t already stacked with hotel pans and chafers from the last event, which usually means the filters wait their turn behind everything else. A failed fire inspection over dirty filters is a bigger problem for a caterer than for a single restaurant, too. Since most catering companies run every booking out of one licensed commissary, a violation there can hold up the whole calendar instead of just one location’s service.

The FOG Tank® takes hood filters out of that competition for sink space entirely. Load them into the tank on their own schedule, and Tiger Carbon Removal Powder strips the grease without anyone touching a scrub brush. Filters typically come out about half a pound lighter than when they went in, and fully degreased, which keeps the exhaust system pulling the way it should and puts you ahead of the cleaning frequency your fire marshal expects. That’s one less thing standing between your commissary and its next passed inspection.

One System For Your Entire Catering Kitchen

Not everything in a catering kitchen belongs in a soak tank, and The FOG Tank® was never built to try. It handles the metal and heavy-duty plastic items that fit inside it. Whatever’s left, oven interiors and prep tables among them, falls to GrimeGo®, a non-toxic, non-caustic degreaser built to the same standard as the tank. Use both, and there’s not much left in the kitchen that isn’t covered.

Trusted By Catering Companies Nationwide

A commissary kitchen answers to the same health inspectors as any restaurant, which makes certification worth checking before new equipment comes through the door. The FOG Tank® holds both NSF (National Sanitation Foundation) and UL (Underwriters Laboratories) certification and is already in use in thousands of kitchens nationwide. Growing catering businesses comparing catering kitchen equipment can read testimonials from our customers or reach out directly with questions specific to them.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a soak tank clean catering equipment like chafers and hotel pans?

The FOG Tank® combines steady heat with Tiger Carbon Removal Powder, and together they dissolve whatever’s clinging to a chafer, hotel pan, or other piece of cookware or equipment, whether it’s dried sauce or grease left over from an event. Load the items and let the tank run its cycle, then rinse them off once it’s done. Scrubbing never enters the process.

Is the Tiger Carbon Removal Powder safe for aluminum and food contact surfaces?

Yes, our Tiger Carbon Removal Powder is formulated to be non-caustic, non-toxic, and fully biodegradable, which means it won’t damage aluminum or anything else that touches food. Cookware and kitchen equipment comes out sanitized already, so the rinse afterward is really just clearing away any loosened residue before the next use.

How often do you change the water and powder in The FOG Tank®?

Once every 30 days. The solution holds its strength whether The FOG Tank® runs after a single event that week or gets used daily, so there’s no mid-month top-off to remember. Compare that to washing cookware and equipment piece by piece after every job, and the difference in time adds up fast.

Does a heated soak tank replace a three-compartment sink?

Health codes require a three-compartment sink, but how much you use it is up to you. Once daily washing and grease removal for hotel pans, chafers, and other items moves into The FOG Tank®, the sink ends up handling a lot less of your kitchen’s workload.

What size FOG Tank® works best for a catering kitchen with a full events schedule?

That depends on how much cookware and equipment comes back after a typical event and how often your kitchen turns bookings around. Tank sizes run from 25 gallons up to 126 gallons, covering everything from a small catering operation to a company juggling several crews in the same week. Our team can help match a tank size to your specific setup if you reach out.

Clean Better, Cater Smarter With The FOG Tank®

Most catering companies see the difference by their next event once The FOG Tank® is up and running: less equipment written off, and crews spending their limited downtime on prep instead of scrubbing. Leasing and purchasing options are both available, and our experts can walk you through either one.

Give us a call at (858) 566-6212 during business hours, or fill out our contact form online anytime to talk through the right tank size for your kitchen.