How to plan a commercial kitchen
Quick answer. Plan the kitchen as a one-way production line: delivery, dry and cold storage, prep, cooking, pass, then wash-up, with raw kept clear of ready-to-eat the whole way. Size every zone to your peak service, get the incoming power, gas, water, drainage and extraction surveyed and sized against a full equipment schedule before you commit the layout, and leave genuine room to work and to clean. Lordwell can survey your site, size the services and spec the line against your covers, then supply it: some lines we hold in our own warehouse for next-working-day dispatch before the cut-off, while most kit is ordered in with the lead time confirmed before you commit, which matters when a fit-out has to land in the right sequence.
A commercial kitchen is a production line, and the single biggest lever on how well it runs is the order the food moves through it: delivery, dry and cold storage, prep, cooking, service pass, then wash-up. Get that flow right on paper first (raw kept clear of ready-to-eat, services sized to the kit, and real room left to work and to clean) and everything you install afterwards earns its keep instead of fighting the space.
The questions to ask before you buy
Does my layout follow the food, from delivery to the pass?
This is the decision everything else hangs off. A commercial kitchen works best as a one-way street: goods in at the back door, into dry and cold storage, out to prep, on to the cooking line, up to the service pass, and dirty crockery back to a wash-up that sits near the exit, not across your clean prep. Lay the six zones out in that order and food, staff and waste all move in one direction without crossing. Fight the order (wash-up beside the raw prep, cold store at the far end from the delivery door) and you build daily bottlenecks and a cross-contamination risk that no amount of good kit will fix.
How many covers am I sizing for at peak, and how much floor does that need?
Size to your busiest service, not your daily average. As a rough planning figure, a full production kitchen tends to want somewhere around a quarter to a third of the dining footprint, and roughly half a square metre of working kitchen per peak cover is a sane starting point before you refine it. Then size each zone in proportion: a menu heavy on fresh prep needs more bench and cold store, a finish-and-fire menu needs more cooking line. Shrink the kitchen to win more tables in the dining room and you pay for it every single service in a cramped, slow, unsafe line.
Where does raw stop and ready-to-eat begin?
Your plan has to physically separate raw meat, fish and unwashed veg from ready-to-eat food, and it is far cheaper to draw that in now than to bolt it on later. That means separate prep benches and colour-coded boards, a dedicated hand-wash basin in each area (not the pot sink), and ideally separate refrigeration so raw chicken never sits above a dressed salad. Where space is genuinely tight you separate by time and cleaning instead, but you must be able to evidence it for your food-safety management (HACCP) and your EHO. Build the separation into the walls and the drainage and it looks after itself.
What services does the building actually have, and what will the kit pull?
Confirm the incoming supply before you fall for a single spec sheet. Heavy electric cooking, induction and large warewashers usually want three-phase and hardwiring, not a 13A socket, and an incoming supply upgrade from the network operator can cost more and take longer than any piece of equipment. Gas needs a correctly sized supply and a commercial Gas Safe (CP42) install. Water needs the pressure and flow for combis, boilers and washers (with softening in hard-water areas), and drainage needs the right falls, floor gulleys and a grease trap. Get the services surveyed and sized against your equipment schedule first, because moving a drain or adding a phase after the floor is laid is the most expensive mistake in the whole job.
Is the extraction sized, ducted and interlocked properly?
The canopy has to cover every piece of heat-producing kit with the overhang the standards ask for, and be sized to the total kW beneath it (the trade works to DW/172 and the relevant ventilation guidance). Just as important is make-up air: pull that much air out without replacing it and doors slam, burners struggle and the room goes negative. On gas cooking a gas interlock is a legal requirement, it cuts the gas if the fan fails or airflow drops. Plan the canopy, the duct run to atmosphere, the make-up air and the interlock as one system at design stage, not as an afterthought once the range is already in.
Have I left enough room to work, to pass and to clean?
Draw the clearances, not just the equipment. Single-file gangways want roughly 900mm to 1200mm clear, and more where two chefs pass back to back or where oven and fridge doors open into the aisle. Every heat and water appliance needs the manufacturer's service and ventilation gaps or it runs hot and dies early. And plan for cleaning from the start: sealed non-slip flooring coved up the walls, kit on legs or castors so you can mop under it, and stainless splashbacks you can wipe down. A kitchen you cannot clean fails inspection and grinds the team down, so leave the room on the drawing while it is still free.
The main types, and who each suits
Zone (assembly-line) layout
Most standalone restaurants, gastropubs and hotels. Groups the kitchen into clear stations (prep, cold, fire, pass, wash) in food-flow order along the walls or in a run, so each chef owns a section and food moves one way. The default for a fresh fit-out with the space to do it properly.
Island layout
Larger kitchens with the floor to put the heavy cooking suite and canopy in one central block, with prep, storage and wash around the perimeter. Gives a single strong extraction point and good supervision sight-lines, but needs the square metres to keep the gangways safe.
Galley (single or double line)
Narrow or space-tight sites, small pubs, and back-of-house behind a bar. Runs benches and cooking down one or both long walls with a central aisle. Efficient for a small brigade, but plan the aisle width carefully so two people can pass during service.
Open / theatre kitchen
Sites making the cooking part of the dining experience. Needs quieter, cooler, tidier kit (induction earns its place here), tighter extraction to keep heat and smell off the guests, and a real plan for noise, sight-lines and a clean-looking pass.
Production / finishing (satellite) kitchen
Central production, cook-chill, banqueting and delivery-only (dark) kitchens, plus satellite sites that regenerate food cooked elsewhere. Weighted towards blast chilling, cold storage and combi regeneration rather than live a la carte fire, with wash-up and packing sized to volume.
What to look for
- Draw the food flow first, one direction from delivery to wash-up, and prove raw never crosses ready-to-eat before you place a single appliance.
- Size each zone to your peak service, with storage matched to your busiest delivery, not your quietest day.
- Get the incoming services surveyed early: three-phase capacity, gas supply size, water pressure and flow, and drainage falls with floor gulleys.
- Specify the canopy to cover all heat-producing kit with correct overhang, sized to the kW load, with make-up air and a gas interlock designed in from the start.
- Separate raw and ready-to-eat physically wherever you can: dedicated boards, benches, hand-wash basins and, ideally, refrigeration.
- Set gangway widths for two people to pass safely, and hold the manufacturer's service and ventilation clearances around every appliance.
- Choose sealed non-slip flooring coved to the walls, and put kit on legs or castors so the whole line can be cleaned under and behind.
- Build a full equipment schedule listing dimensions, power, gas, water and drainage per item, and confirm lead times before you lock the layout.
Costly mistakes to avoid
- Laying kit out by what fits rather than by food flow, so raw prep, cooking and dirty wash-up cross over. It creates permanent bottlenecks and a cross-contamination risk you cannot design out later.
- Shrinking the kitchen to squeeze in more dining covers. A kitchen too small for its peak slows every ticket, burns out the team and often cannot hold food safely, and you cannot buy the space back once the walls are up.
- Specifying equipment before surveying the services. Finding out you need a three-phase upgrade, a bigger gas supply or a moved drain after the floor is down turns a clean fit-out into a costly, delayed rebuild.
- Treating extraction as an afterthought. An undersized canopy, no make-up air or a missing gas interlock leaves the kitchen hot, smoky, non-compliant and, on gas, unable to run legally at all.