Kitchen working patterns should determine layout

Nation's Restaurant News, Feb 10, 1992 by Patt Patterson

There are far too many cases where the layout of the kitchen imposes its working patterns on the preparation staff, instead of the other way around. In a few operations that's not all bad, but in most it just complicates an already complex work flow.

The biggest problems arise when the kitchen is designed by someone who doesn't have experience. Some time ago I was invited to tour the foodservice setup in a new office building. The owner was a company that wanted several levels of foodservice for its staff.

That included an executive dining room at the top of the building, a cafeteria and an all-day snack bar. The central kitchen was in the basement, with elevators and dumbwaiters to the floors where the food would be served.

I couldn't believe what I saw when I walked into the kitchen. To start with, it was huge. All the refrigerated storage ran down one long wall that looked as if it were half a block long. It was broken only by doors to dry storage areas.

Down the other wall, about 50 feet away, ran all the cooking equipment: ranges first, grills, then fryers, steamers, then steam kettles, finally -- at one end -- the ovens.

But the element really boggling the mind was that between the two, in a nearly unbroken line right down the middle of the kitchen, and equal distance -- about 20 feet -- from each line, were the worktables, mixers, vertical cutter-mixers, pot and pan racks, overhead. There were also prep sinks, a bain-marie and sandwich stations. To get the food from the refrigerators or storage rooms directly to the cooking line meant having to move all the way to one end of the kitchen -- about 125 feet long -- to get around the end of the prep line and reach the cooking equipment.

It turned out it was designed by the building's architect. The first chef hired quit without ever preparing a meal. The second lasted two weeks.

Within a month that kitchen had been totally relaid out at a cost of nearly $120,000. The room was divided into functional stations by the foodservice consultant called in desperation, and the equipment -- plus all the utility lines -- had been moved. The contractor's crews worked round the clock, and the kitchen was out of operation only for two and a half weeks.

It was all caused by permitting kitchen layout by someone who didn't have the kind of experience needed. It was a real horror story.

Not too long ago a friend of mine opened a small, 40-seat, very upscale restaurant. He's the chef, and he runs his kitchen with only one other person, his sous chef. His wife is the hostess.

You wouldn't believe the size of the kitchen. As his wife puts it, it's a "two-fanny" kitchen. But it's organized to fit his style of cooking, and everything he needs is within reach without being cluttered. The same thing is true for the sous chef.

There are essentially two stations, and each is self-contained. But even that one wasn't designed by just one man. My friend brought in his equipment supplier's design team, told them what he wanted to do and they worked with him to develop that two-fanny kitchen. It works and works well.

It's an example of how professional designers can work with a professional kitchen staff to create a kitchen that does what it's supposed to.

For one thing, like many fast-food operations, which this is certainly not, the service personnel don't come into the kitchen. There's a pass-through window, and they work in a service pantry between the dining room and the kitchen. It's easy to talk to the chefs, but everything the wait people need is in the pantry, and there's a minimum of confusion.

A lot of foodservice consultants point out that there has to be a fine line drawn between laying out a kitchen for the planned menu and laying it out for the type of operation. In other words, by analyzing the menu and laying out the kitchen for preparation of just those items on the menu, the layout is frozen, and it's almost impossible to make any substantive changes in the menu down the road.

On the other hand, in laying out the kitchen so anything and everything can be prepared, the danger is loss of efficiency.

The two biggest problems that a kitchen designer faces don't have to do with space. They are the owner who hasn't really settled on a menu and the one who has a menu that's "never going to change." Both make the job almost impossible from the standpoint of getting the most efficient, versatile layout.

If there's one thing that's given in this foodservice world, it's that "nothing stands still." That applies to menus, to patron's states and to the operator's objectives. The more flexible a layout, the longer it will perform efficiently.

I was amazed at the central kitchen for the Corpus Christi school system in Texas a few years ago. Just about everything, at least all the preparation equipment, was mobile. It was wheeled, and utility lines were set up so almost everything could be plugged in at a number of different locations. Talk about flexibility! And it worked and worked beautifully.