Induction vs Gas in a Commercial Kitchen: How to Choose

Induction has moved from a novelty bench unit to a serious cookline option in Australian commercial kitchens. Gas has not gone anywhere. Choosing between them is now a real capital decision, and the honest answer is that it depends on what you cook, what your switchboard can carry, and what your lease allows.

The short answer

Induction suits kitchens doing controlled, pan-based cooking — sauces, proteins, à la carte, banquet reheating, café and bistro service — and kitchens where heat, ventilation load and staff comfort are genuine problems. Gas still wins where you need enormous, uncontained heat against a curved or oversized vessel: wok ranges, large stockpots, char grilling and target tops.

Most Australian venues end up with a hybrid cookline rather than a clean switch. That is not a compromise. It is usually the correct answer.

The decision is rarely about which technology is "better". It is about three practical constraints: the heat your menu actually needs, the electrical supply your site actually has, and the cookware your team actually owns.

How the two technologies actually differ

A gas burner makes heat in the air underneath the pan, then relies on conduction, convection and radiation to move some of it into your food. A great deal escapes around the sides of the vessel and into the room. That escaped heat is what your exhaust canopy spends all day removing.

An induction zone makes no heat of its own. A coil under the glass generates a magnetic field, and that field induces a current directly in the base of a ferrous pan. The pan becomes the heating element. The glass only gets hot because the pan is sitting on it.

This is why the efficiency gap is so wide. ENERGY STAR puts induction’s transfer to the cookware at about 85%, against roughly a third for gas. That figure comes from domestic appliance testing, so treat it as direction rather than gospel for a heavy commercial burner. The commercial picture points the same way: the ENERGY STAR commercial cooktop specification requires at least 80% cooking energy efficiency, and gas cooktops are not eligible for certification at all.

The number that decides it: MJ/h against kW

Gas equipment is rated in megajoules per hour (MJ/h). Electric equipment is rated in kilowatts (kW). Buyers compare the two badly because the units look nothing alike, and a 31 MJ/h burner sounds vastly more powerful than a 3.5 kW induction zone.

The conversion is fixed: 1 kW = 3.6 MJ/h. But raw input is the wrong comparison, because gas throws most of its input away. What matters is heat delivered into the pan.

Two things fall out of that table. First, a 3.5 kW induction zone is a fair match for a standard 31 MJ/h open burner — much closer than the numbers suggest at a glance. Second, the wok line is a different universe. A high-output wok burner such as the B+S Black Double Hole Hi Pac Wok runs to 270 MJ/h across two burners, with 210 MJ/h available on a single ring. A standard flat induction zone cannot reproduce that. Purpose-built induction wok hobs do exist, but compare their vessel compatibility and sustained output carefully against a high-output gas ring before assuming they will keep up.

Your electrical supply is the real constraint

This is where most induction projects come unstuck. Buyers choose the unit, then discover the site cannot feed it.

Australian supply is nominally 230 V single-phase and 400 V three-phase under AS/NZS 3000, the Wiring Rules. In practice, commercial induction sits on a ladder, and each rung is a different conversation with your electrician and your landlord.

Read that last row carefully. The manufacturer lists that 7 kW unit at 29.2 A. That is roughly three times a standard 10 A power point, and it needs its own circuit installed by a licensed electrician. There is no plug on the unit because no standard plug would be appropriate. Use the manufacturer’s installation documentation for the figure on any given model — nominal voltage varies, and so does the current it implies.

In New South Wales, all electrical wiring work must be done by a licensed electrician regardless of value, and a Certificate of Compliance for Electrical Work is required. The NSW Government guidance for electricians sets out both obligations. Gas work carries an equivalent licensing requirement for gasfitters.

Cookware: the cost nobody budgets for

Induction only works with ferrous cookware. If a magnet does not stick firmly to the base of the pan, that pan will not heat. This rules out most aluminium, copper and some stainless lines, and it rules out traditional round-bottomed woks entirely unless the unit is a purpose-built induction wok.

Two other practical points. Base flatness matters far more on induction than on gas, because contact is everything; a warped pan will heat unevenly or not at all. And zone diameter matters: a small pan on a large zone may not be detected. Check the maximum vessel weight too — the Anvil drop-in unit, for example, is rated to a 30 kg maximum pot weight.

Where induction genuinely wins

• Ambient heat and staff comfort. Because the heat is made in the pan rather than the room, kitchen temperatures drop noticeably. In an Australian summer, in a venue without generous air conditioning, this is not a soft benefit.
• Ventilation load. Less waste heat and no combustion products mean a lighter thermal and contaminant load on the canopy and make-up air. On a new fit-out that can support a smaller exhaust and make-up-air design — but it does not remove the need for a compliant canopy. Cooking still produces grease, smoke, steam and odours, and final sizing is the mechanical engineer’s call under the NCC and AS 1668.
• Control and repeatability. Power changes instantly, and a set level is the same level tomorrow. For sauce work, tempering, holding and anything a less experienced cook has to reproduce, that consistency is worth real money.
• Cleaning. A flat glass top with no trivets, burner caps or spill trays cleans in a fraction of the time. Because the glass is heated only by the pan sitting on it, spills away from the pan are generally less likely to bake on hard.
• Front-of-house and mobile service. No open flame and no gas bottle makes induction the default for live cooking stations, buffets and pop-ups. A portable 15 A unit is easy to move between service areas, but it still needs a matching 15 A outlet on a suitable circuit. Confirm the connection at every site before you rely on it.
• Sites with no gas. Increasingly common in newer commercial tenancies and shopping-centre food courts.

Where gas still wins, and where induction is the wrong tool

• Wok cooking. A round-bottomed wok needs flame wrapping up the sides of the vessel. Induction cannot reproduce that, and the delivered heat of a 210 MJ/h wok ring is far beyond any single induction zone. Browse the Asian cooking range for the gas equipment built for this work.
• Large stockpots and boiling tops. Gas is usually the easier answer for oversized vessels, because a multi-burner boiling top takes them without argument. Heavy-duty induction stockpot units do exist, so the real question is whether a specific unit supports your vessel diameter, weight and output — and whether the supply is there to feed it.
• Char grilling and open-flame finishing. The cooking method is the flame. See commercial char grills.
• Sites with weak electrical supply. If the switchboard has no spare capacity and an upgrade is not commercially viable, gas remains the sensible answer.
• Short leases. Spending heavily on a switchboard upgrade you cannot take with you is a poor use of capital.
• Power reliability. Some gas appliances stay usable in an outage, but many commercial installations depend on powered ignition, electronic controls or a gas–ventilation interlock that shuts the gas off when the exhaust fan stops. Treat outage operation as an advantage only if your manufacturer, gasfitter and ventilation designer confirm it for your specific install.

Matching the choice to your venue

Running costs: what actually drives them

Gas is generally cheaper per unit of energy than electricity in Australia. Induction uses far less energy to do the same work. Which of those two facts wins depends entirely on your tariff, your usage pattern and whether you have solar generation.

We will not publish a dollar figure here, because an honest one does not exist without your actual rates. What we can tell you is what to put into the calculation:

• Your electricity rate in c/kWh and your gas rate in c/MJ, including daily supply charges for both.
• Whether removing gas entirely lets you drop a gas supply charge — for a low-usage kitchen, that standing charge can be a large share of the bill.
• Solar generation. Daytime cooking on induction can be partly self-supplied; gas never can.
• Demand charges, which some commercial tariffs apply to peak draw. A large induction cookline can move you into a higher band.
• Air conditioning load removed from the kitchen, which is a genuine saving and almost always ignored.

Installation, cleaning and maintenance

Induction glass is tough but not indestructible. Dragging heavy cast iron across it will eventually mark it, and a dropped stockpot can crack it. Follow the manufacturer’s cleaning instructions. As a general rule, use a proprietary ceramic cooktop cleaner rather than an abrasive pad, and clean at the temperature the manufacturer specifies rather than on a surface still hot from service.

Gas equipment needs burner ports kept clear, jets checked, and flame quality inspected periodically by a licensed gasfitter. A yellow, lazy flame where a crisp blue one should be is a service call, not a nuisance.

For both, confirm before purchase whether the unit is bench-mounted, drop-in or on a stand, and whether the connection point sits where your bench actually allows.

Compliance and where the rules are heading

Victoria has legislated the direction of travel. Under Victoria's Gas Substitution Roadmap, new commercial buildings — excluding industrial, manufacturing and agricultural buildings — must be built all-electric from 1 January 2027. Existing buildings are not required to electrify.

No equivalent NSW-wide requirement applies at the time of writing, though local planning controls, development conditions and landlord requirements can differ. Even so, if you are fitting out a new tenancy or planning a long lease, it is worth asking your landlord and your designer what the building's gas future looks like before you commit to a gas-only cookline.

Whichever way you go, the licensing rules are not optional. Electrical wiring work needs a licensed electrician and a compliance certificate; gas work needs a licensed gasfitter. Both protect your insurance position as much as your staff.

Six mistakes we see buyers make

1. Comparing MJ/h to kW as if they were the same scale. They are not, and the raw numbers flatter gas badly.
2. Buying the induction unit before checking the switchboard. Establish available capacity first. A 7 kW unit drawing 29.2 A is a circuit, not a power point.
3. Forgetting cookware. Magnet-test the existing batterie and budget for replacements before comparing prices.
4. Putting induction on the wok line. It will disappoint, and no amount of specification fixes it.
5. Ignoring the ventilation saving on a new fit-out. A lighter canopy and smaller make-up air system can offset a large part of the equipment premium — but only if the designer knows early.
6. Assuming a plug means plug-and-play. A 15 A plug will not fit a 10 A outlet. That is a deliberate safety feature, and it needs an electrician to resolve.

Where to start

Begin with your menu, not the equipment. List the cooking actions your kitchen performs every service, mark which ones need uncontained flame or oversized vessels, and you will usually find that most of the line can be induction and a small, specific part of it should stay gas.

Then get your electrician to confirm available capacity at the board before you shortlist anything. That single step prevents the most expensive mistake in this category.

You can browse the full induction cooktop range and the gas ovens and ranges range, or work through the wider commercial cooking equipment catalogue if you are specifying a whole line. For the ovens that sit alongside the cookline, see combi ovens and benchtop equipment.

Related reading

• How to Choose Safe and Efficient Gas Cooking Equipment for Commercial Kitchens
• Complete Guide to Choosing the Best Cooking Equipment for Commercial Kitchens
• How to Select the Right Chinese Wok for Commercial Kitchens
• How to Design an Efficient and Functional Commercial Kitchen Layout