One main issue that needs to be addressed before deciding on a kitchen design is how food will be delivered to guests. This is recognized as the service system. A large operation, such as a hotel, may have more than 1 service program running simultaneously: elegant table service, room service, and casual bar service. At the other end of the spectrum, quick-service restaurants employ service systems that emphasize speed and convenience, including takeout support and also the fast-food option of standing in the same counter to order, pay for, and wait for a meal served within minutes. Each service system has subsystems; together, they encompass all aspects of the progression of food from the kitchen area to the table and back to the dishwashing area.
This progression is known as flow, much like the traffic flow of the grid of busy streets. There are two types of flow to consider when planning the layout of your kitchen area: the flow of elements and the flow of traffic. Product circulation is the movement of all food, from its arrival in the receiving area, through the kitchen, to the diners. Visitor flow can be the movement of employees through the building as they perform their duties. Ideally, in both types of circulation systems, you would want to reduce backing and crossings, again, to make sure the “streets” don’t get clogged.
You’ll find 3 basic flow patterns in every foodservice operation: The raw materials to create each dish flow from front to back. They make it to the back of the restaurant, into the kitchen area, where they get ready. They then travel to the front from the restaurant, to be served in the dining room. Finally, they return to the back, as waste. The third type of traffic pattern can be the flow of service personnel as waiters collect food, deliver it to guests, and clean tables. On the busy night, the entire system really does resemble a busy highway. As you can imagine, there is often the potential for disaster if someone makes a wrong turn.
The key to managing these 3 types of circulation is that none should interfere with the others. Inside the kitchen, there is also a unique flow for each cooking section. It could be a pattern of steps chefs follow to prepare each dish or the methodical way dishwashers scrape, sort and wash dishes and remove waste. The support systems and flow designs of your business should guide the style of your kitchen. An operation with large numbers to feed in short periods of time will differ from 1 which also feeds large numbers but in a longer period of time.
Can you see how? The distance from the kitchen to the dining room is an essential consideration, and
kitchen designers have come up with numerous strategies to deal with it. You may have noticed that in some restaurants, servers are expected to perform some food-related tasks outside of the kitchen area, at waiting stations closer to guests. They can slice and serve bread, serve soup, prepare and dress salads, or make drinks. The idea is to speed up support and preserve the (sometimes inadequate) space of the kitchen area for actual cooking tasks.
Another critical decision to be made early in the design process: Should servers enter the kitchen area to collect food, or should it be delivered through a walk-through window between the kitchen and dining room? Although the pass window is considered informal, it could be used in a fancier restaurant, perhaps masked from public view by a wall or partition. Each of these elements (distance and access to the kitchen) help determine your flow layouts. In an ideal world, the flow patterns would all be straight lines that do not intersect. However, this perfect is rarely achieved. An easy rule of thumb is that the faster you want your serve to become, the more important it is that your circulation patterns don’t cross. Within a quick service scenario, flow lines should be short and straight.
The next time you’re standing at a fast food counter, notice how few steps most workers have to take to pour your soda, pick up your burger, and pack your fries. Speed is the desired result.
The opposite is true within a fine dining establishment, where all the work is done in the kitchen area to enhance the sense of a relaxed dining experience. No noisy dishes, no bustling waiting stations here. Now that we have analyzed the movement of people as they go about their business in the restaurant, stick to the food flow line: the path of raw materials from the moment they enter creation to
the time they become leftovers.
The receiving region is where food is unloaded from delivery trucks and brought into the building. Most restaurants locate their reception locations near the back door. Our next stop is storage (dry storage, refrigerated storage, or freezer storage), where large amounts of food are kept at the right temperatures until needed. Food that emerges from storage goes to one of several preparation areas for vegetables, meats, or salads. The slicing and dicing take place here, to prepare the food for its next stop: the production region. The size and function of the preparation region vary widely, depending primarily on the style of service and the type of cooking area.
When most people think of the restaurant kitchen, what they envision is the production line. Here the food takes its final form before it is served: Boiling, sautéing, frying, baking, roasting and steaming are the main activities in this area. The food is placed on a plate and garnished before it heads out the door on a serving tray. And that’s the end of the typical food flow line. Several kitchen performance centers are not included in the common food flow sequence, but are closely linked to it. For example, storage locations should be in close proximity to the staging area to minimize employee pacing. In some kitchens, there is a separate ingredients room, where everything needed for a recipe is organized, for pickup or delivery at a particular workstation.
Storage is much more useful when placed near the preparation region than near the receiving region, saving busy workers steps. The bakery is usually located between the dry storage and cooking areas, because the mixers and ovens can be shared using the cooking area. A meat cutting region is also essential. It should be in close proximity to both refrigerators and sinks for safety and sanitation reasons, as well as for easy cleaning. Keep in mind, however, that some kitchens simply aren’t large enough to accommodate separate specialized work centers. Kitchen space planning becomes a matter of juggling priorities, and it’s an ongoing commitment.
As you juggle yours, think about each task that is performed in each workplace. How essential is it to the overall mission of the kitchen area? Are there assignments that can be modified, rearranged, or eliminated altogether to save time and/or space? Some of the ideas that need to be discussed here are: the frequency of moves between numerous pieces of gear, the distance between pieces of gear, allowing room for temporary “landing areas” for raw materials or finished plates to settle until As needed, put equipment on wheels so it could be moved from one site to another, creating a “parking space” for equipment when not in use.
Simply put, if work centers are adjacent to each other, without crowding, you save time and energy; And if people who work in more than one area have convenient, unobstructed paths between those places, they can perform more efficiently. An often-missing center of work is the sink, which always seems to be relegated to the darkest corner of the kitchen. Sure, it’s not one of the most attractive areas, but think of the many other workplaces that depend on it. The common kitchen generates an overflow of pots and pans. Why not put the sink closer to the production line to deal with the mess?
And, speaking of pots, think carefully about where to store them. Both clean and dirty, they take up a lot of space and require creative storage solutions. Pot/pan racks can often be hung directly over the sink area, giving dishwashers a handy place to shop for clean pots right from the rack. (Remember that anything stored near the floor should be at least 6 inches off the floor for health reasons.)