5 Reasons Your Commercial Kitchen Layout Matters

It may be an all-day-dining type of a venue such as a cafe. It may be a bistro operating during lunch & dinner hours. Hospitality businesses experience rushes that amount to increased stresses, for hours at a time. Smooth transitions from mise en place, to cooking the order, to serving the dishes to the customers are the results of a well thought out kitchen layout. Dancers rehearse all day to put on a show, so do the staff in the kitchen. The reward is multi-faceted where a successful service rewards everyone in the venue from the customers to the front of house staff and most importantly, the staff in the kitchen. Here are our five reasons why your commercial kitchen layout matters.

Bigger is not always better.

Commercial kitchens are shrinking. This is an ongoing trend and will continue to be the norm for the years to come. Some venues are blessed with a sizeable kitchen and offers a great advantage. However, having a smaller kitchen can contribute to a lesser capital expense at inception along with a reduction in running costs over the years. Smarter commercial appliances such as a compact combi-oven are small yet still delivering consistent outstanding results. Passthrough dishwashers from Hobart with Vapostop feature together with an energy recovery system can greatly reduce the overall ceiling space required for an exhaust canopy.

Space, the final frontier.

During idler times, space in the kitchen becomes prime real estate. Chefs and other staff would use the time to prepare items for future shifts. Often, there aren't enough bench space in the kitchen to place benchtop appliances such as robot coupes, vitamix blenders and slicers. The equipment doesn't necessarily require permanent residencies on the bench unlike sous-vide circulators and pacojet, which are required during service. On top of that, chopping boards and gastronorm trays full of ingredients often get parked on benches for long periods at a time as the kitchen staff prepare away.

Area planning:

Workflow.

Are any of the staff running into each other constantly? We hear kitchen staff providing loud verbal prompts such as €œbehind€ or €œcorner€ out of necessity. A constant barrage of these prompts may be due to an inefficient design.

Example: A kitchen hand weaving between cooks to collect a pile of used pots & pans and the prompts had gone unheard creating an accident where the cook dropped a pan of hot, cooked item. This has created a pronounced snowballed effect for the rest of the service because of the need to fire up the same order and disrupting the flow. Not to mention, someone may have been injured which may lead to a worksafe investigation.

Issues like these can be easily resolved when processes are considered.

• Kitchen hand able to collect used pans without entering the cooking line.

• Keeping chefs at the stations for the whole duration of service.

• Front of house staff able to drop dirty items without disrupting the cooking line.

 Station planning:

Storage considerations to promote smooth & efficient service.

Everything at arms' length is any chef's dream scenario in the kitchen. A pilot rarely leaves the chair when placing adjustments into the plane are required. The pilot's job is to focus on processing the information at hand and executing swiftly. Chefs constantly leaving their stations during service to grab paper towels to dry their hands, getting tissues to wipe the plates before serving or replenishing mise en place are tell-tale signs of inefficiencies that can be easily addressed.

Every volumetric area in the kitchen should be utilised. Examples include:

• Brackets installed below the overhead shelves to secure boxes of gloves or tissues.

• Spaces allocated for crockery required to serve food on that can also be replenished by the kitchen hand.

• Shelving allocated for used cookware to be taken away or replenished by the kitchen hand without entering the cooks' space.

• Ample refrigerated storage at arms' length or just a step away.

Hygiene & clutter.

'Clean as you go' is a term often adopted in the kitchen. The wash area gets dumped with a whole heap of crockery and cutlery during service. Storage for baskets and for sorting and handling of crockery & cutlery is a priority. This reduces the chance of dreaded pile up and gives the kitchen hand a chance to clear things up hygienically and efficiently. A correctly selected dishwasher will do wonders. Recovery period, the time required for the water in the tank to come up to the correct temperature, is our first consideration to selecting a dishwasher. An adequately powered dishwasher can churn baskets quickly, therefore reducing build up. Glassware should never really enter the kitchen and are often cleaned by front of house with the help of an undercounter glass washer machine.

Maximum savings, maximum rewards.

Having a well-designed kitchen layout leads to one conclusion - everyone from the kitchen to the business owners benefit greatly from their working environment. A well-planned kitchen should be considered as part of a holistic approach to a smart business. A safe working environment drastically reduces stress. Chefs stationed in a smarter workstation get to deliver orders in a timely manner achieving multiple seatings per service maximising profit without burning the staff out.