Commercial · Food service

Your coffee tastes like your water.

Coffee, tea, soda and ice are mostly water, and chlorine is what usually shows up in the cup. That is the problem we can fix in a restaurant. Everything after it — scale control, softening, treatment on a specific appliance — follows from what we measure in your building.

Commercial pricing Quoted after we look at the building

Start an inquiry How we handle commercial work

A filtration housing plumbed into the water feed of a combi oven in a stainless commercial kitchen.

Scoped to the equipment What a kitchen needs is usually decided by two or three specific machines — the espresso machine, the combi oven, the ice maker — not by the square footage of the building.

The honest version

Scale is the usual pitch. Here it depends on your address.

Why the answer here starts with a measurement instead of an assumption.

Most restaurant water pitches start with scale — limescale in the ice machine, the dish machine, the combi oven. In a hard-water city that is a real and expensive problem.

Central Alabama Water (formerly Birmingham Water Works) publishes total hardness of 38 to 224 mg/L across its system — roughly 2.2 to 13.1 grains per gallon. That range covers most of the standard classification: slightly hard at the bottom, and above the 10.5 grain line into very hard at the top. Where a given address falls depends on which source and which part of the system feeds it, which is why a published range is a reason to test rather than an answer on its own. Figures are from the 2026 Annual Water Quality Report (2025 monitoring data).

So a softener is not automatic for a kitchen here. We test the water at your building first. If the number is low, we will tell you, and scale control comes off the quote. If the hardness and the appliance justify it, we size the system for the load you actually run.

One thing holds at every address on the system: taste. Chlorine is in the water because it is supposed to be, and it carries straight through into anything you brew, pour or freeze. That part we can fix on day one. Scale control is the part we quote once we have your number.

Kitchens on Trussville, Pelham or Alabaster water are a different set of published figures again, and the answer moves with them. Establishing which utility serves the address is the first thing we do.

What we will tell you

Your measured hardness, taken at the building, before anyone recommends softening

Which appliances in your kitchen justify treatment, and which are fine as they are

A straight answer when the reading comes back low enough that softening earns nothing

No safety claim: treatment changes taste and odor, and your water already meets every standard

Two glasses side by side on a stainless counter, one holding cloudy ice and one holding clear ice. — Cloudy ice is usually trapped air and dissolved solids freezing out of the water, not a dirty machine — which is why a filter sometimes fixes it and sometimes does not. The ten-minute diagnosis.

Questions

Questions we get about this.

Will this fix limescale in my ice machine?

Sometimes, and we measure before saying so. Central Alabama Water publishes total hardness of 38 to 224 mg/L across its system, about 2.2 to 13.1 grains per gallon, so the answer depends on which water reaches your building. At the low end of that range, scale is rarely the reason an ice machine fails. At the high end, or on an appliance that boils and re-boils the same water, scale control earns its place. We test your line first and tell you which one you are.

Does treated water make my food safer?

No. Central Alabama Water meets every federal and state drinking water standard. What treatment changes is taste and odor, which is what your customers notice in coffee, tea, soda and ice.

Do I need backflow prevention?

Almost certainly, and it is a requirement rather than an option. Food service connections usually have to carry backflow prevention and have it tested on a schedule. Carbonated beverage equipment is a specific and well documented hazard, because carbon dioxide can push back into copper lines. The water utility and the health department set what applies, and we confirm it with them before we quote.

How much does it cost?

Commercial work is quoted after we look at the building, so the number comes from your kitchen rather than a list. What we quote depends on how much beverage water you draw at peak, which appliances are involved, and what the backflow position turns out to be. The visit to find out costs you nothing.