As far as commercial kitchen equipment goes, the TurboChef oven is a bit unassuming. Just slightly wider than a microwave, it can sit right on the countertop, and its ventless design produces little heat and no exhaust.
But don’t let its low profile fool you. This small but mighty oven is having a big impact in restaurant kitchens as of late.
The TurboChef is part of the foundation for the innovative food hall/delivery concept Wonder. It is now a standard feature at all 400-plus locations of Cava, the fast-growing Mediterranean fast casual. And it has been an undersung element of the miraculous turnaround at Chili’s Grill and Bar, which recently named TurboChef parent Middleby its Supplier of the Year for 2025.
As its name implies, TurboChef is known for speed. It is widely used by quick-service chains such as Subway and Starbucks, where fast service is essential. But the oven’s newer converts have been equally taken with some of its other attributes, such as its flexibility and small footprint.
They’re using it to cook vegetables, ribs, potatoes, salmon, cookies and more, with each recipe pre-programmed and tied to a single button-push. It’s like a Swiss army knife you can set and forget.
“I think that the technology is so robust, and it’s continued to evolve to the point that there’s just really nothing it can’t do,” said Alison Brushaber, who was VP of culinary services in the early days of TurboChef.
Though the TurboChef seems to be enjoying a new wave of interest, it has been around for a while.
The company was founded in 1991 in Dallas by entrepreneur Phil McKee, who was reportedly inspired by the diversely stocked vending machines he’d seen during a trip to Tokyo. While developing a vending machine that could produce freshly cooked fries, chicken and pizza on command, he ended up inventing a high-speed oven (with some help from engineer Earl Winkelmann).
The duo’s big breakthrough was figuring out how to combine impingement cooking—which uses streams of high-speed hot air to cook food quickly and evenly—with microwaves. This allowed the TurboChef to deliver the same results as a regular oven, but in a fraction of the time. Brushaber recalled that during tests, the TurboChef was up to 12 times faster than a traditional oven.
That head-turning speed helped TurboChef land a deal with sandwich giant Subway, which in 2004 began using the company’s ovens to toast subs at all of its 20,000 locations. At the time, it was the biggest equipment sale in restaurant history, Brushaber said.
The ovens can sit on a countertop and don't require a hood. | Photo courtesy of TurboChef
TurboChef would go on to ink deals with Dunkin, Panera and Starbucks, which requested a custom, coffee-colored oven with rounded edges. Today, it has sold more than 400,000 ovens worldwide, said Leslie Banados, SVP of global sales and marketing for TurboChef.
And while most of those have gone into quick-service restaurants, TurboChef has branched out over the years. Convenience-store chains are increasingly looking at compact, high-speed ovens as they up their foodservice games. And more recently, full-service chains are showing interest as well.
“It’s not just about the speed,” Banados said. “It’s also about having the labor available to do it, right? Having the real estate, as you’re looking at smaller-footprint concepts.”
She noted that it is “insanely expensive” to install an exhaust hood these days. For the ventless TurboChef, restaurants don’t need one.
There are no hoods in the kitchens of 73-unit Wonder, for instance, which uses the TurboChef to cook everything from pizza to steak. That has unlocked real estate possibilities for the brand as it marches toward 90 locations this year. “We can put this kitchen in a shoe store,” founder Marc Lore told Restaurant Business in 2023.
Banadaos said that at least some of the recent demand for TurboChef on the full-service side has been sparked by Chili’s. The chain known for baby-back ribs and margaritas has become the toast of the restaurant industry thanks to a focus on simplification, value and sharp marketing, with a side of TikTok fame for good measure.
Part of Chili’s playbook included installing TurboChefs in all 1,200 of its restaurants this year. It had been testing the ovens for several years, and operators were clamoring to get them systemwide.
“Whenever you talk to these directors of operations and say, ‘What's the next big investment that we need to make in the restaurant?’ … the first thing they say is, ‘Can you just convert the rest of my restaurants to TurboChef?’” Kevin Hochman, CEO of Chili’s parent Brinker International, told analysts in January.
Once a full rollout was a go, Chili’s completed it in less than six months, making it one of the fastest equipment installs ever at the 50-year-old brand, said James Butler, Brinker’s chief supply chain officer.
The Double Batch TurboChefs replaced the chain’s conveyor belt ovens, which also used impingement, but were limited somewhat by the speed of the belt. It meant Chili’s had to modify its recipes so that they could all work at the same speed.
Chili's named TurboChef parent Middleby its supplier of the year. | Photo courtesy of TurboChef
The TurboChef gives the chain more flexibility. The company can program the oven with different times and temperatures for each recipe, letting the quality of the ingredients shine.
In the conveyor oven, “you were probably sacrificing a bit on the margins for [each recipe],” Butler said, “whereas this piece of equipment today allows us to hit the sweet spot.”
Chili’s is currently using the TurboChef for salmon; the chicken that goes in its salads and bowls; quesadillas; skillet cookies; and its recently upgraded ribs. The oven has helped the chain strike the right balance on its ribs, with a crispy bark on the outside and a tender interior, Butler said.
The oven has also improved Chili’s speed and sequencing, so that food comes out at the right time and temperature, even for larger groups. And it has freed up space in the kitchen. The brand is now thinking about how to leverage that extra space as its restaurants face an influx of customers.
The ovens are also far more energy efficient and give off less heat, which has made Chili’s employees happy.
“When you can find that intersection of improving the team member experience and improving that guest experience all in one, you’ve really delivered something to the restaurant that they can get behind,” Butler said.
The results couldn’t be more clear: Chili’s is coming off five straight quarters of double-digit same-store sales growth and is seeing the highest customer satisfaction scores in its history. The TurboChef isn’t responsible for all of that, but it has been one piece of the larger puzzle, Butler said.
And the new ovens have played a big enough role to catch the attention of others in the casual-dining world. In August, an investor in Dine Brands, the owner of Applebee’s and IHOP, wrote a letter to the company encouraging it to install TurboChefs at all of its restaurants.
“TurboChef cuts cook times, improves consistency, and lowers training costs,” Jim Osman, founder and CEO of the Edge Group, wrote in an email to Restaurant Business. “If each Applebee’s and IHOP can turn tables faster with the same labor, franchisees win. Stronger unit economics translate directly into a stronger system and, ultimately, a more valuable stock.”
Dine Brands did not respond to a question about whether it was considering Edge Group’s request.
For Cava, the TurboChef checked all of the above boxes and more.
Currently, the Washington, D.C.-based brand is using the ovens to roast vegetables for its bowls and pita wraps, as well as white sweet potatoes when they’re in season. It chose a model that features impingement only so it can stay true to its brand promise of no microwaves.
The TurboChef replaced the chain’s gas-powered Wood Stone Ovens that were knob-based and inconsistent by nature.
“It’s like if I was at your house and I said, ‘Hey, put [the oven] on medium high,’” said Ted Xenohristos, Cava’s co-founder and chief concept officer. “Where would you turn that knob to, right?”
The TurboChef eliminates the guesswork for employees. Now all they have to do is push a button to cook veggies to spec each time.
The result has been a more uniform product and 50% faster cook times, Xenohristos said. That means staff can cook in smaller batches, so customers get fresher veggies.
The TurboChef’s smaller size also allowed Cava to cut its oven space in half and widen its grills by 12 inches. And in the future, the TurboChef will allow Cava to take even more pressure off of those grills as it develops new menu items.
“When you have restaurants with lines out the door trying to keep up with grilled chicken and grilled steak and grilled lamb meatballs, we have to think of other ways in,” Xenohristos said. “And so the TurboChef offers us an exit ramp from the grill itself.”
It doesn’t mean that every new item will go in the TurboChef, he said, but it’s another tool at Cava’s disposal as it lays out a road map for the next three or four years.
A Double Batch TurboChef like the ones used at Chili's. | Photo courtesy of TurboChef
So with all of the benefits the TurboChef offers, what’s stopping every restaurant from buying one?
For one thing, new equipment is a big investment. The list price for a TurboChef ranges from $10,400 for the basic model to $30,000 for one with more bells and whistles, Banados said. In an effort to make the oven more accessible to smaller operators, it recently unveiled a new “base-level” model, the Cibo+, that starts at a lower price point.
The TurboChef also entails a change to a restaurant’s usual training and operations. For large chains, that can be like turning a cruise ship, Brushaber said. It’s a major decision that can’t be made lightly.
At the same time, many restaurants prefer more old-fashioned cooking methods, even if they take longer.
“Some people still really like the romance of having the big pizza oven in the place,” Brushaber said. “And although they could do it much more quickly with a TurboChef oven, there's still a little bit of an appeal to that.”
But even industry veterans see a lot of value in the “new” cooking technology. For Richard Eisenbarth, who spent 45 years in the restaurant business as president of foodservice consultancy Cini-Little, the TurboChef meets two of the most pressing issues he sees in kitchens today: labor and utility costs. And it fits with the long-running trend of kitchens “going vertical” to fit into smaller spaces as real estate costs rise.
He said he planned to advise the Cini-Little team to keep TurboChef in mind as a way for restaurants to address some of those challenges.
“Really what you're seeing produced now is that type of equipment that gives you the ability to do multifunctions a lot quicker with less labor,” he said. “So that's where we're going, and I think the genie’s out of the bottle and it's going to keep going and going.”