Changes in food habits, styles, and technology have quickly evolved commercial kitchens around the world. Why? Because people’s preferences are changing, and so are restaurant menus.
And as restaurants adjust their dishes to help customers navigate their allergies, food intolerances, and requirements when dining out, they’re also adapting their kitchen layouts to maximize efficiency. Commercial kitchens are now planned down to the last centimeter to optimize their workflow. A lot goes into creating a restaurant’s kitchen layout, and it all begins with understanding the principles of commercial kitchen design. So let’s dive in.
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Before designing a commercial kitchen, you’re starting with a blank slate. You know how much space there is to work with, but what happens next? The first step is to define your eatery’s concept clearly. This includes the type of cuisine served, service style, location, and of course, target clientele. Part of developing your concept includes doing market research to determine what customers want and what type of kitchen layout works best for your menu, production volume, and team. But remember that different concepts will have unique requirements.
How To Design A Commercial Kitchen
Barbecue joints need grills, rotisseries, and even conveyor ovens to cook meat to perfection. In contrast, a bakery would have a different set of requirements. Their concept may call for installing high-volume vertical- or smaller batch spiral mixers and convection ovens into their kitchen’s design. Once you’ve determined your restaurant’s concept, think about how to adapt it to six commercial kitchen design principles.
The Certified Food Service Professionals (CFSP) program is considered the gold standard certification for foodservice professionals located in countries across the globe. Their guidelines help to raise standards and quality for the entire industry. As part of their program, they use a set of guidelines found in the CFSP handbook. This handbook lists six commercial kitchen design principles organized into these categories:
Busy kitchens have to pivot and adapt to everything from seasonal menu updates to the preferences of new chefs. And for these reasons, professional kitchens have to have the flexibility to move different stations around for easier prep work and cooking. Rolling grill carts, griddles, and other mobile shelving give professional kitchens the versatility to alter the layout to suit their needs.
Choosing Between Restaurant Kitchen Layouts
As you plan your kitchen design, you’ll want to eliminate anything that could lead to inefficiencies for staff. For instance, storage is important, but unnecessary shelving inside a small space could lead to a cluttered, unorganized kitchen. This causes cooks to spend more time searching for what they need instead of doing what they do best.
When the lunch and dinner rush hits, the last thing teams need is to work in an environment that doesn’t match their workflow. Not optimizing commercial kitchen layouts to streamline service leads to confusion in the kitchen and injuries.
According to the US Bureau of Labor, in 2019, there were 93, 800 nonfatal injuries in full-service restaurants — most commonly cuts and burns. Preventing these injuries begins with creating a space designed for how kitchens function:
Top 10 Design Features To Borrow From Restaurant Kitchens
Prep to Production/Cooking: From there, staff will pull those products from cold or dry storage so they can start prepping. After preparing the ingredients, other workers will need to have easy access to cook them.
Serving and Cleaning: Once meals are fully prepared, there needs to be a place to conduct a quality check before serving. After service is completed, commercial kitchens should have a designated area for cleaning and sanitizing dishes, cooking equipment, and utensils.
Since professional kitchens get daily cleanings, their designs have to include wash stations and waste disposal facilities to meet health and safety regulations. Mopping floors and wiping down walls are part of these requirements, along with periodic deeper cleanings. Because of this, your layout needs to allow for counters and other equipment to move around. This mobility makes it easier for staff to get to these areas.
Why Is Good Kitchen Layout Important For Restaurants?
Open commercial kitchen layouts remove barriers that make it difficult to get food out quickly and efficiently. Walls, shelving, and other obstacles can affect how well people interact and could slow down service. And in fast-paced kitchens, where teams have to be on the same page about timing, production, and quality control, communication is everything. When planning any commercial kitchen, the design needs to make it possible for everyone to see what others on the line are doing during service.
Your commercial kitchen layout plan needs to be optimized for your team and maximize every square inch of space. This means bringing in only the essentials your team needs and will consistently use. It’s a smarter investment and prevents equipment from lying around, taking up room in the kitchen.
When used together, these design principles create the ideal professional kitchen that works for any establishment, no matter its size or concept. These elements also provide the template for choosing the most important equipment kitchen staff need to work quickly and efficiently.
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Running a commercial kitchen is all about efficiency. Back-of-house staff must be able to perform their duties without getting in one another’s way. This is especially true if you’re operating in a space with a smaller footprint, such as a ghost kitchen .
Kitchen Planning 101: A Quick Study Of Kitchen Layout Design
An assembly line layout is built to optimize the assembly of a meal. This is typically utilized for high-volume production, catering, or items in high demand. Food preparation starts at one end, and the dish is finished by the time it reaches the end of the “line.”
This linear approach to kitchen workflow looks like this: In the first section, ingredients are prepared and assembled. From there, the line flows into the cooking area. This is followed by the plating or packaging station.
With this layout, the washing station and storage area tend to be located behind the line so as not to be in the way.
Restaurant Kitchen Design & Layout
This type of layout divides the kitchen into zones according to the type of dish being made. Each station is isolated from the others and often segregated according to the type of commercial kitchen equipment or meal preparation required for that specific type of dish. A zone layout allows you to focus on assembling a wide range of menu items. Additionally, the sink and storage areas are typically closest to the entry-door, whereas the service area is closest to the exit door.
A galley layout is often the go-to setup if you operate in a kitchen space with limited square footage. This type of layout has all of the different stations and equipment positioned along the kitchen walls. The name galley is derived from this layout's original use in boat kitchens, where space is extremely limited.
With this type of restaurant kitchen layout, the chefs and the food are the stars of the show; they take center stage and can often be seen by restaurant guests. All of the cooking equipment is centered in and around the island section. And other sections, such as the food preparation area and dishwashing area, will be pushed to the kitchen’s perimeter.
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• The island acts as the focal point, allowing the executive chef to oversee all operations from the central spot of the kitchen
Like an Island layout, an open kitchen layout allows the restaurant guests to enjoy the show. This contributes to a relaxed atmosphere where the curtain is drawn back, giving the meal a sense of intimacy and experience.
In most circumstances, the setup will be circular to allow easy flow and movement. Storage and dishwashing are pushed to the back, if not entirely out of view, whereas the cooking station and prep area are in the open. This is an especially popular option for chefs who use fire and spectacle with their cooking style.
Simple Restaurant Kitchen Layout Ideas To Help Back Of House Run Easier
Because this type of layout is specific to the restaurant, there’s no clear blueprint. Open kitchen layouts vary depending on the square footage, cooking equipment, food style, and head chef.
Now that we’ve reviewed the five primary layouts for a commercial kitchen, how do you determine which one is ideal for your restaurant?
– The amount of square footage you have to work with will determine what you can or can’t do with a kitchen. Larger, more flashy layouts such as the open layout and the island layout are great for kitchens with more space. These types of layouts sacrifice the maximization of space in favor of spectacle and atmosphere, but they’d be impossible, or at least impractical, in many circumstances. If you have a small commercial kitchen space, or if you operate a ghost kitchen, an assembly
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