Heavy-Duty vs Standard Aluminum Foil: Which Gauge to Buy

Walk into a restaurant supply and the foil on the shelf comes as standard, heavy duty and extra heavy duty. Those names suggest three fixed grades, but they are not. Each maker uses them to mean a thickness of its own choosing, so the word on the box tells you less than the number does.

Gauge is the number to read

Foil thickness is quoted in gauge in the United States, where 100 gauge equals one thousandth of an inch (one mil). So 80 gauge is 0.0008 in, or about 20 micron, and 100 gauge is 0.001 in, or about 25 micron. Outside the US, foil is quoted in micron directly. If a listing gives only a name and no number, ask for the number.

Typical weights

Treat the ranges as a guide, not a rule. They overlap between makers: one brand’s heavy duty can be another’s extra heavy. Compare the gauge on the listing, and the weight of the roll, rather than the label.

Check it against the roll weight

You can check a claimed gauge with arithmetic, because foil is a plain sheet of metal. An 18 in × 1000 ft roll is 1,500 square feet, which is 139.35 square metres. Aluminum weighs 2.70 grams per cubic centimetre, so at 80 gauge (20.3 micron) the foil weighs 139.35 × 20.3 × 10^-6 × 2.70 × 10⁶ grams, about 7.6 kg (16.8 lb). Distributors list real 80 gauge rolls at about 16.7 lb shipping weight, which is the figure the thickness predicts. A roll that weighs far less than that is thinner than it claims.

When heavy duty is the cheaper choice

Standard foil costs less per roll, so it looks like the saving. It stops being one when the job needs two layers. Foil that tears at the corner of a loaded pan, or that a bone punches through, gets doubled over or replaced, and the cost per pan climbs above the heavy-duty roll that did the job once.

• Choose standard for wrapping and covering light things: sandwiches, bowls, trays that are not carried.
• Choose heavy duty for covering loaded hotel pans, lining sheet pans under bone-in meat, anything lifted or carried, and anything that goes on a grill.
• Choose extra heavy only if you routinely see 80 gauge tear, such as long, rough, high-heat jobs. Above that you are usually fixing a technique problem that better pan handling would solve more cheaply.

What the weight does to freight

Metal is heavy. A roll of 80 gauge foil weighs about 7.6 kg, so seven rolls is over 50 kg and a pallet is a very heavy load. Freight is a larger share of the delivered cost than it is for light products such as mailers, which is one more reason to compare the delivered price per roll rather than the listed one.

Foil and the rest of the kitchen order

A kitchen buying foil usually also buys bin liners and, if it ships food, film and tape. Our guide to trash bag thickness covers the same mil-and-gauge idea for bags, and our stretch film gauge guide does it for pallet wrap. The units are the same everywhere: gauge is a hundredth of a mil, and a mil is a thousandth of an inch.