Commercial Kitchen Guide: How to Set It up and What You Need

Is your commercial kitchen ready to tackle a busy service with impatient diners? There are too many things to think about when setting up your first commercial kitchen. When branching into the food industry, you need to have your commercial cooking equipment installed correctly before serving anyone.

This is critical if you want to be successful by ensuring safety standards. If your kitchen is not completed before you start firing up the grill to sell the most delicious food, you may risk being liable for accidents.

For instance, you should always think about how much space your staff will have. Can they sprint around cooking and taking orders without tripping? Is there enough room for people to walk around on a busy night?

Do you have the right tools to clean all your utensils? Here is everything you need to know about building your own commercial kitchen and how to do it the right way to prevent expensive mishaps.

Commercial Kitchen Flow

This is the first aspect to consider when designing and setting up your commercial kitchen. You need a design and layout that maximizes your revenue and efficiency.

Otherwise, it would be tough to remain competitive in this cutthroat industry. The main things to go over while designing your kitchen are whether you have enough space, how many people you will employ to run the kitchen, and how many covers you can achieve using that space.

This is the best way to ensure that you run a balancing act performed between the front of the house and the back kitchen. With less commercial cooking equipment, you free up a lot of space to move around safely while reducing the carbon footprint.

Therefore, it is not necessary to splurge on unnecessary pieces of equipment that you may not use as often. Only invest in the kitchen gear that can handle your specific menu and serve enough customers to make a profit.

Not only will a simple and efficient design prevent accidents in the kitchen, but you will also save a ton of money and avoid contaminating food prep areas.

Designated Areas for Cleanliness

To keep an eye on traffic, you need to establish separate areas for serving, cooking, and washing. If you have an efficient process, you can significantly cut down the time for other tasks.

For instance, do your servers have enough room to carry food-covered plates through the dining area without disrupting staff and customers?

By mapping out your commercial kitchen equipment in advance, you make more money by minimizing basic errors.

Stand in the middle of your kitchen and envision the process in your mind. Picture how a busy night full of diners and staff members under one roof would look like.

When dishes are being returned, where does the washing-up process happen? Does the staff have easy access to this area? What can you move to ensure that clean crockery can be stored and accessed before the food gets cold?

Always keep a smooth kitchen flow with separate designated dishes, cooking, and prepping sections. This way, you know how much food to serve beforehand to avoid buying expensive commercial cooking equipment you do not need. Cutting down on these expenses and free up more space to help improve the kitchen process.

Delivery Zone

Naturally, you will consider doing home deliveries for orders. Therefore, you may expect delivery trucks to bring all your fresh ingredients daily. This means you need to ensure that all delivery vehicles have sufficient access to your restaurant.

Never use corridors or hallways as storage areas because this can be a health hazard. Think about where you will receive all your goods each day. Ask yourself if this is a safe and efficient delivery point.

You should have plenty of room to allow all your catering staff to zoom around the kitchen without bumping into each other. You also need to have enough table space or racking equipment to store goods.

Your chefs may also ask for some scales to measure the weights of all your fresh produce to ensure all orders are the correct size.

This way, you will never be in a position where you run out of food on a busy Friday night because you will always have the correct amount to handle all your weekly sales before ordering more produce.

Primary Storage Equipment

It would be hectic to run a successful commercial kitchen without high-grade storage to keep your ingredients fresh and utensils clean. When shopping for commercial kitchen equipment, always prioritize refrigerated space.

To do this, you need to invest in a walk-in cold room for your staff members to store and access everything they need for prep and service.

Having a walk-in fridge can also help you save money because you can order ingredients in bulk and keep them for longer. Management will also enjoy a walk-in fridge. It organizes all your goods so you can always stay on top of product cycles and expiry dates. This will help guarantee that only quality ingredients get served to customers.

Other Storage Needs

Other types of storage you should also examine are freezers and dry cupboards. Although a walk-in fridge should suffice, some businesses prefer commercial freezers.

This is necessary for a tiny kitchen without a lot of space to hold large shipments of ingredients. Your freezer storage can be a simple, upright standalone cabinet to help you save space in a busy commercial kitchen.

Lockable dry cupboards come in handy to house all your canned foods and spices. If you do not have enough cabinet space, you can also opt for kitchen wall shelves. These are excellent if space is a luxury in your kitchen, especially during a busy service.

Finally, you must have another cabinet for disposables, such as napkins and takeaway containers.

Ensure that you do not store crockery in the same cabinet because these need to be away from water and grease to stay clean. The best place to store crockery is near the washing-up basin.

This minimizes movement in the kitchen. Your cutlery can be easy to access without all the kitchen pollution settling on them after being scrubbed.

Order Your Kitchen Equipment Today

It is necessary to have all your commercial kitchen equipment set up and ready before serving the first customer. With the proper storage, prep, cleaning, and dining gear, you can cut accidents and reduce wastage during busy services.

Your customers will always keep coming back to you for more. Contact us today to find the best commercial kitchen equipment, so you can run the most profitable catering business.