RESTAURANT KITCHEN DESIGN
When you lease a space for your resturant, your profit comes
from your ability to quickly deliver exceptional food to as many
guests as possible at a rate that outpaces your operating costs,
thus generating profit. Restaurants are odd because the
Production Facility is located within the same four walls as the
Retail Facility. Imagine if Best Buy MADE the TV's
they sell. The more space your kitchen occupies, the less
space you have in which to retail your product. This means
that the size of a restaurant's kitchen must perfectly relate to
it's production capacity and retail seating capacity. Often, square
footage required can be reduced through purchasing a piece of
equipment that maximizes productivity...but which pieces are
"gadgets" and which are vital to preserve the permanent structural
advantage afforded by it?
Industrial Kitchen Design
Kitchen Design and menu design go hand in hand...but the menu
must be developed before the kitchen. We often encounter
restaurant owners who build their kitchens THEN created their
menus. How can one put fried fish and French fries on a menu
unless there are two fryers in the design? Save a buck on the
second fryer and your Fries taste like Fish. What about a
menu that only has two woodfire grilled items but they purchase a
72 inch wood grill? How much extra wood will you burn all
year just to produce the two items? if you've never designed
a kitchen facility, opening a new restaurant is not the time to
start. Hire a restaurant
consultant. They money you spend will come back to you
exponentially and could be the difference between dark doors and
profit.
Time and Motion
Before you hire someone, be sure they're fluent with menu
development and that they know how to operate a successful
kitchen. Ask them about Time and Motion and
what their thoughts are on the number of steps a cook must
take from preparation to service and if they'll consider this in
the design. If you can eliminate a cook position through
intelligent equipment placement, you should. If you can
purchase stock equipment versus customizing, you should. Will
they employ sound kitchen design principles? What is their
experience in a kitchen? What is their experience with
design? Can they design a scalable kitchen (...between
meal periods, when business is slower, your kitchen should be able
to run with fewer employee)?. Your architect won't ask you for a
copy of the menu...he'll let you tell him what you
want then design it using little more than minimum code
requirements and design experience. Hopefully that experience
includes a substantial restaurant operational background. if
you've never designed a kitchen facility, opening a new restaurant
is not the time to start. Hire a solid, reputable, restaurant
consultant or restaurant advisor. If you don't, the money you
save on the front end could haunt you for years to come.
