Design and set up · 3 min read
Planning a restaurant kitchen around how food moves.
A kitchen can have good equipment and still work badly if the pieces sit in the wrong order. These steps help you think the layout through before anything is built.
Follow one plate
Pick the dish you expect to sell most. Trace its ingredients from the delivery van to the store, the prep table, the cooking line, the plate and the guest. Then follow the dirty plate back to the dishwash.
If those two paths cross, or a cook has to walk past the dishwash to reach the cold store, you have found your first problem, and it is still only a line on a drawing.
The zones, in order
- Receiving: a door and enough space to check deliveries, weigh them and send back what is wrong, close to the stores.
- Stores: dry stores, fridges or a cold room, and a freezer, sized for your menu and for how often you can get deliveries.
- Preparation: space for cleaning and cutting vegetables, and a separate area for meat or fish if the menu has them, so raw food stays away from cooked food.
- Cooking: the line where food is cooked to order. Set the ranges, ovens, tandoor and fryers so a cook moves one way through each dish.
- The pass: the counter where a cook finishes and checks each plate before a server takes it. Put it next to the door to the dining room.
- Dishwash and waste: give dirty plates and garbage their own route, so they never cross where food is prepared.
What an Indian menu asks of a kitchen
A menu of gravies, breads and rice has needs of its own. It needs prep space for bases and masalas made ahead, a way to keep gravies hot through service, a tandoor with its own heat and ventilation, and a bread station near the pass so rotis reach the table hot.
Plan the services before the floor
Exhaust hoods and ducts, fresh air, gas lines, water, drains and the electrical load decide where equipment can go. Moving a drain after the floor is laid means breaking the floor, so mark every service on the drawing together with the layout.
Check it against your busiest hour
Count the people who will work in the kitchen at your busiest hour and walk the routes they will take. Two cooks should not need the same corner at the same time. If they do, move the equipment on the drawing now, while it is still only a change on paper.