Event hire · Catering & bar

Catering equipment hire

Field kitchens, hot cupboards and fridge trailers behind the scenes. Delivered, set up and collected by suppliers who cover your patch.

Chefs at work over steaming pans in a marquee field kitchen
Quick answer

Catering equipment hire typically costs £45 to £90 for a hot cupboard, £80 to £150 for a 6-burner LPG range, and £150 to £350 per weekend for a refrigerated trailer. Most field catering runs on LPG to keep generator load down. Your caterer should specify the list; you provide power, water and a level dry area.

This is the category guests never see and caterers live or die by: the field kitchen. The standard pattern is a catering tent annexed to the marquee, LPG cooking (to keep the generator honest), hot cupboards for service, and a fridge trailer humming outside. The caterer specifies; the organiser’s job is the environment: level ground, water, light, and the agreed power feeds.

What it costs

Catering equipment hire: typical UK guide prices
ItemTypical guide priceNotes
Hot cupboard £45–£90
6-burner LPG range £80–£150
Catering tent 6×3m £250–£500
Fridge trailer, weekend £150–£350
Water boiler £25–£50

Guide prices exclude VAT and vary with season, region and site access. Quotes from suppliers are always the real number.

Catering equipment hire: questions organisers ask

Who hires the catering equipment, me or the caterer?

Either works; what fails is nobody owning it. Many caterers bring or hire their own kit and bill it through. If they expect you to arrange hire, get their written list with power ratings, then put it on the same order as your generator so the loads reconcile.

Does a fridge trailer need to run overnight?

Yes: it stocks up the day before and must hold temperature until service. That makes it the defining load for overnight generator running (or a mains hook-up if the site has one), so flag it to the power supplier explicitly.