Commercial Kitchen Design: a Guide to Restaurant Workstation Setup

A perfect commercial kitchen enhances your workflow not affecting food quality or safety. Wondering what’s the best way to optimize your restaurant kitchen design? We’ve got you covered.

Before starting the optimization process, remember, there are five essential commercial kitchen components:

• Food preparation zone with sinks for washing produce, mixing areas and cutting areas;
• Meal cooking, where the magic happens and where the main dishes are finished;
• Cleaning/washing area that include sinks, warewashing machines, drying racks and other food sanitation equipment;
• Storage area will include cold storage, non-food storage and dry storage;
• Service area is the final component of a commercial kitchen. It’s where the serving staff picks up dishes to serve to customers.

Having realised the importance of these zones, you will go to choosing the perfect design layout for your kitchen. The trick is there’s no need to reinvent the wheel when other restaurants have found successful, efficient layouts. All you have to do is decide which one suits you most.

Island-Style

The meal cooking area is placed at the center of the kitchen in one module. Other work stations are placed along the perimeter walls in proper order to allow for circular flow.

This open kitchen restaurant design promotes communication and supervision, but also leaves a lot of room for easy cleaning.

The island-style layout works best for large kitchens with a square shape, but it can be modified to suit other kitchen sizes and shapes.

Zone-Style

The kitchen is split into blocks. All major equipment is placed along the walls, and sections flow in proper order to improve efficiency. The center of the space is left open, which allows for communication and supervision.

Assembly Line Layout

Is perfect for kitchens that have to serve large numbers of people, such as school cafeterias and correctional facilities.

With this type of layout, each kitchen station is organized in a line, with the food preparation area at one end and the service area at the other end. This allows cooks to send food down the line.

Other things you should do while working on a perfect workstation include:

• Consulting with your chef, for he’s the one to run the show in that kitchen;
• Knowing your menu and ingredients, for they will dictate what type of equipment you’ll need and how your food will be prepared;
• Taking a minimalistic approach to save on space and optimize the layout;
• Marrying workflow, sanitation and food safety;
• Thinking about maintenance in advance. Repairmen should be able to access any of your kitchen elements in case of a break.

Commercial kitchen design is complex and strategic. But putting time and effort into creating an efficient layout will keep your kitchen running smoothly while ensuring that food gets to your customers as soon as possible.

Source: https://mcdonaldpaper.com/blog/build-restaurant-workstation