Restaurant Kitchen Design
Restaurant kitchen design depends heavily on what kind of menu the restaurant is going to serve. Whether you are designing for church kitchens, institutional food service, coffee shops, bakeries, cafes, pizza restaurants, or a five star gourmet restaurant, each of those will have a differently styled kitchen design.
Each of the restaurants above will have a different vision in mind from the owner, and that vision needs to be implicitly worked with. For instance with the pizza restaurant, creating a design that will best utilize the kitchen space means that one must remember a very key piece of equipment – the pizza oven.
Strategically placing other important items is also part of good restaurant kitchen design. In a leased space, for example, there is already drainage and running water. However if one has to place sinks at the other extreme side from where the water and drains emanate, that will cost a tremendous amount of money, thus a good restaurant kitchen design will incorporate the already existing electrical, drainage and water sources into the design.
A great restaurant kitchen design will also incorporate kitchen staff efficiency in it, especially if the kitchen space is large. Having the staff running from one side of the kitchen to the next makes for inefficient use of the kitchen which will encourage accidents, and definitely make labor costs rise. A good working environment is of extreme importance to your kitchen staff, and will help in retaining your best staff.
A great design will also take into account the budget that the owner has placed for setting up the kitchen. Designing a five star gourmet kitchen in a coffee shop is a waste of time, and definitely an extravagance that needs not be. In other words, a small neighborhood coffee shop certainly will not need the specialty stations that the five star restaurants will require, not to even broach the subject of equipment.
Getting a fantastic restaurant kitchen design needs to be created by a professional using their creativity, skills and experience to work with you and incorporate your ideas and thoughts to create not only a well designed kitchen but help you to have a profitable foodservice business. For example, you should receive a plethora of drawings from such a professional, such as floor plans, equipment schedules, shop drawings, plumbing & electrical drawings, rough-in drawings and finally also provide for elevation drawings.
Granted that allowing too much space for each station in a workable restaurant kitchen design is costly to the owner, but the reverse is also true. Not having enough space means that the kitchen will not function as it should. This will undoubtedly result in very poor performance for not only the customers, but also will create a very disgruntled staff, which in turn causes a higher turn-over among chefs.
