Finding the Best Food Weighing Scales for Sale

There are a wide variety of food weighing scales for sale, but which one is best for you? This blog will discuss the commercial, industrial and quality control areas of the food world and which scales we recommend for all three.

The categories we’ll present aren’t exclusive, many of them overlap. A trade approved scale can also be waterproof and a compact portion control balance can also be a precision balance. This means there’s a fantastic chance you’ll be able to find the perfect food weighing scale for your needs.

Commercial

If your business sells food directly to consumers, such as a restaurant or farmer’s market, you need a scale that’s geared toward commercial purposes. Keep in mind that if you’re selling products by weight, you’ll need a trade approved scale.

Retail Scales

A retail or price computing scale is a type of trade-approved scale that makes retail and commercial operations easier thanks to its specialised design. They’re ideal for pop-up shops, small shops such as bakeries or farm stores and market stalls.

Price computing scales feature three displays instead of the typical one so it can show weight, price per kilo/price per pound and the price your customer pays at the same time. Most also boast an extensive memory to store unit weight and price per unit of your most popular items, called Product Lookups (PLUs).

Adam’s Swift SWZ is excellent for commercial businesses, thanks to its impressive 161 PLU memory for all your top-selling products.

Let’s say you own a sweet shop. Many sweets are quite small, so charging per unit would be difficult and time consuming. Charging by weight saves both you and your customer’s time. If your customer brings a bag of M&M’s they’ve scooped to your counter, you will then enter in the reference number for M&M’s into your scale. This would recall the price per kilo/price per pound so all you need to do is weigh the M&M’s. The price your customer needs to pay will instantly appear on the third display. Easy!

Even in a retail environment, however, a price computing scale may not be your best option. Adam Equipment recently wrote a blog about choosing between a regular trade approved scale and a retail scale, since both types have advantages and disadvantages. You can read it here.

Portion Control Food Weighing Scales for Sale

In food & beverage businesses such as restaurants or cafeterias, you don’t usually sell by weight. However, you do want to measure by weight to make sure that everyone is getting a consistent portion size. This helps prevent customers from getting more or less than they paid for and ultimately saves you money. Compact scales perform exceptional portion control, as they don’t take up a lot of room and they offer just enough capacity for most dishes.

With an easy to clean stainless steel pan, we recommend the CBX Compact Bench scale, with capacities from 1200g to 6000g and a rechargeable battery good for 200 hours of use.

Industrial

These scales are more important behind the scenes of the food & beverage industry.

Washdown/Waterproof Scales

You work in a food processing plant, a seafood market or a kitchen with high hygiene standards. Without a washdown or waterproof scale, hygiene can be difficult to maintain. A washdown scale is any with an Ingress Protection (IP) rating between 65 and 67, while waterproof scales are IP68 or IP69 rated. For a more thorough explanation of IP ratings, you can read our blog here.

IP ratings make washdown and waterproof scales protected against liquid and solid ingress. You can spend your days weighing wet and messy items without worrying about damaging the scale. Easily clean them with a gentle cleanser, water and a good scrub. In addition, many washdown and waterproof scales boast stainless steel construction, which is bacteria resistant.

For those who are only concerned about splashes rather than spills, the IP67-rated Aqua ABW is ideal with its ABS plastic housing and stainless-steel pan. An IP68 or higher is recommended for more intense jobs, such as the Aqua Stainless Steel or the Inscale IWS. Should you need a higher capacity, Adam’s Gladiator floor scales are IP68 rated with capacities from 75kg to 300kg.

Platform Scales

Most major food production facilities have high-tech machines and assembly lines to do a lot of the work. However, the ingredients must come from somewhere. Platform scales are large with high-capacities. This makes them ideal for weighing heavy bags of ingredients such as flour or sugar to make sure that the right quantities are being used during mass production.

They’re also helpful in the shipping and receiving department, to weigh your own pallets of food before shipping them out. This will help you estimate shipping costs and adjust if necessary. Likewise, when you receive pallets of goods, you may want to weigh them to guarantee you’re getting the quantities expected.

Kern’s BID Floor Platform Scale is IP67 rated with dual-range capacities from 300/600kg to 1500/3000kg. It offers a compact frame perfect for European pallets and heavy bags of ingredients.

Counting Scales

Though many regular weighing scales may offer a counting function, they’re likely to be pared down and not super intuitive. Counting scales are designed to make counting tasks such as food packaging and inventory control easier. Like a price computing scale, counting scales offer three different displays for weight, unit weight and piece count. They also offer full numeric keypads and dedicated buttons for entering in unit weights, samples, prices and PLUs.

For improved organisation and efficiency, we recommend Adam’s BCT Label Printing Counting Scale. After you’ve counted enough pieces, simply hit print to pop out a fully customisable label. You can then stick this on boxes of inventory or even bags of products to demonstrate that everyone’s getting the right amount.

Precision and Quality Control

The food and beverage industry always requires a bit of finesse and precision, especially when it comes to quality control.

Precision Balances

During the development process, precision balances are exceptional for helping determine the perfect composition of food and beverages. For example, how much sugar is too much in a single lollipop? How much flavoring is necessary to taste and yet not overwhelm? Precision balances determine these minute details before upscaling them into major production.

They’re also excellent for small scale baking operations. As we all know, baking is a science, and professionals take this science seriously. To ensure that each product gets the exact right amount of ingredients every time, a precision balance like Kern’s PES can give you results as fine as the third decimal place.

Checkweighing Scales

Checkweighing scales are like both counting and retail scales in that they’re created for a specific purpose, to make checkweighing tasks easier. Though they offer just one display, this display commonly changes colors depending on your result. Using the full numeric keypad and dedicated buttons, you can enter your lower and upper limits. Then, when you weigh your apple pie, for example, the display will change to yellow if you need to add more filling, green if the level is great as is, or red if you need to remove filling. This will make quality control applications exceptionally easy.

Adam’s Cruiser CKT Bench Checkweighing scale has the above qualities and more, though if you need a scale with a higher capacity, the GFK Checkweighing Floor scale is an excellent choice. If checkweighing isn’t a feature you’re likely to use often, look out for scales and balances that offer checkweighing, but not as a ‘main’ feature. A good example is Adam’s Aqua ABW-S.

Consider Capacity & Readability

When you’re deciding between all the food weighing scales for sale, one of your first considerations should be the capacity and readability you need. A scale’s capacity is how much weight it can accurately measure. For example, a scale with a 2kg capacity can accurately weigh 2kg or less, but having anything heavier on the pan may damage the scale.

 Its readability is how many increments your results will have. A precision scale will have a ‘fine’ readability, such as 0.01g. That means you’ll get your results to the second decimal place. Your typical bench scale will have readabilities from 1g to 0.1g. In general, the rule of thumb is that the higher a scale’s capacity, the less fine the readability will be. There are exceptions.

Consider items you’ll need to weigh regularly and their average weight, as well as how precise your results need to be. For the best luck, search for food scales with capacities a safe distance above your heaviest item and check with your company’s regulations on what weight increments they require.

Still wondering about which food weighing scales for sale are best for you? Contact our team, we’ll be happy to help.