Designing and Building an Adaptable Professional Kitchen

American restaurants are entering a new radical chapter. The preceding chapters might have been titled ‘The California Italian Revolution,’ ‘The Age of the Celebrity Chef,’ ‘Chang, Meyer, & Shake Shack,’ and ‘Costs: A Rising Tide.’ Today’s chapter should be called ‘Which Way is Up?’

In 2020, covid-19 and race riots shook the nation. The restaurant industry was not just shaken, it was run over by a train. A decade's worth of questions needed answering overnight.

Is tipping a viable model? Are third party delivery companies ethical? Is fast casual the future of dining? Will fine ding survive? Do we need to embrace delivery? How do we incorporate more technology? How can we pay our employees fairly? How can we steward racial equality? Will dining out be the same after the pandemic?

This is just a sampling; there are so many other pressing questions. The general theme of these questions is that restaurants are entering an age of the unknown. Dining will be drastically different in 5 years, but it is very difficult to identify exactly how it will be different. We don't know which way is up. The key to success will be a restaurant’s ability to adapt in a climate of constantly changing norms and expectations.

Kitchens will not be immune to the age of the unknown. With offices emptying out in large cities, will lunch be the same? Will lunch shift permanently to take out or, with so many people at home, will lunch become a more drawn-out social dining room affair? A kitchen needs to be able to adapt to both opposing scenarios.

Here’s another example of the kitchen unknown. People invested billions of dollars in home improvements during 2020, building homes where they want to spend more time. Will catering or meal kits take off over the next decade? Will your kitchen be capable of adapting to catering or assembling meal kits?

To be ready for an unknown future, restaurant kitchens need to be designed and built with multiple purposes in mind. How are adaptable kitchens designed? Here are 8 rules to keep in mind when designing and building adaptable kitchens.

1. Don’t over-concept
2. Keep it simple/Less is more.
3. Embrace technology
4. Open space is a blessing
5. When possible, go big
6. Walk in freezers are a lifesaver
7. Design for delivery
8. Double down on cooks

Don't Over Concept

Over the past decade, restaurant concepts have become incredibly specialized. Custom grills, ovens and stovetops have been designed, built, and installed to support very specific food visions. Kitchen layouts have been drawn to support these specialized concepts. The problem is that when constant adaptation is the rule, concept specific kitchens become a burden. Be creative with concepts. Be careful with over specialized equipment and layouts.

Keep it Simple/Less is More

When designing a kitchen, go with tried-and-true designs and tried and true equipment. Choose designs with a proven track record. Variety in large and small equipment can cause problems. Only purchase what is absolutely necessary; if quick adaptation is required, there won’t be a boatload of superfluous equipment. Variety requires more training, tracking and maintenance. Clutter is the bane of an adaptable kitchen. Simple streamlined designs will yield the most adaptable environments.

Embrace Technology

While keeping it simple, make an effort to embrace technology. Technology can save labor and reduce waste. Technology that does not achieve these two goals should be avoided. A combi oven, though expensive, will save thousands over time. It is much harder to overcook expensive food in an immersion circulator than in an oven. Wifi activated and controlled equipment can reduce the need for cooks on premises. Chefs can sometimes be allergic to ‘technology.’ It is time to cure that allergy.

Open Space is a Blessing

Learn a lesson from the most adaptable of all cooks, the caterers. Their kitchens are designed to serve a multitude of functions.  What do they all seem to have in common? Open space with lots of tables on casters that can be arranged in various formations. Open space allows improvisation and customization for different situations. Avoid the temptation to fill space with equipment.  Empty space is a blessing.

When Possible, go Big

This will cost a bit more money up front, but when you have the opportunity, go big. That larger mixer, larger oven, larger smoker, larger sink, larger cooler, or extra 15 feet of hood might very well come in handy when adapting from an original concept to a different concept that requires more production from a different piece of equipment. (Say, from dine in restaurant to dine in restaurant and take-home meal kit assembly ...) Be ready for these changes with right sized equipment.

Walk in Freezers are a Lifesaver

Restaurants deal in perishables. Freezers allow restaurants to easily preserve perishables. Walk in Freezers allow restaurants to preserve perishables on a large scale. Yet walk in freezers are frequently the first piece of equipment cut from a kitchen design. Walk in freezers allow chefs to work in large batches and take advantage of economies of scale. They allow chefs to take advantage of dips in commodity pricing (when butter is cheap, buy lots of butter). Walk in freezers save massive amounts of money and preserve perishables when the unpredicted strikes.

Design For Delivery

Whether we like it or not, third party delivery companies are here to stay. Delivery is no longer an afterthought; it is a fact of life. Design kitchens with delivery in mind.  Know where bagged food will be housed, know where delivery drivers will enter and wait. Design space and storage for disposable containers.

Double Down on Cooks

Labor, more than any other operational component, can make or break a restaurant. Adaptable kitchens need to be designed so that cooks can easily work multiple stations when restaurants are below capacity and when cooks are hard to find. When designing a kitchen, do so with not just Saturday night in mind, design with Tuesday night in mind as well. Intelligently designed lines allow for the rapid labor adjustments required by today’s constantly changing restaurant environment.

Which way is up? In the current restaurant reality, it’s a tough question to answer. Kitchens need to prepare for a future that is largely unknown. In times like these, it is important to remember that there is massive upside and opportunity for those that find themselves at home in restaurants and kitchens. Restaurants cannot continue to operate under the same set of rules; the norms and customs that govern dining out have changed significantly. Dining in a post 2020 world will look markedly different that it did before 2020.  Adaptability will be the name of the game.