Setting up a commercial kitchen is about far more than buying equipment and finding somewhere to put it.

A good kitchen should allow your team to prepare food quickly, safely, consistently and profitably.

Get the layout wrong and your staff can spend the entire service walking back and forwards, waiting for equipment, searching for ingredients or getting in each other’s way.

Get it right and the kitchen becomes one of the most efficient parts of your hospitality business.

Here’s how to approach setting up a commercial kitchen properly.

1. Start with your menu

The biggest mistake is choosing your kitchen equipment before you’ve properly planned your menu.

Your menu should determine what your kitchen needs.

Look at every dish and identify:

• How it is prepared
• What equipment it requires
• How long it takes to prepare
• How many staff are involved
• Which ingredients need refrigeration
• Which items can be prepared in advance
• Which items are cooked to order
• Which dishes use the same ingredients or equipment

If your menu requires a large amount of grilling, you need a different kitchen setup to a business focused on salads, sandwiches and cold preparation.

Design the kitchen around the food you sell.

2. Understand your expected volume

A kitchen that works for 30 meals a day may completely fall apart when you’re producing 300.

Think about your expected:

• Covers
• Peak service periods
• Average order size
• Delivery orders
• Takeaway orders
• Functions and events
• Breakfast, lunch and dinner requirements

Don’t design your kitchen around an average Tuesday.

Design it around your busiest realistic service.

3. Plan the workflow

A good commercial kitchen should have a logical flow.

Ideally, food should move through the kitchen in a relatively straightforward direction:

Delivery → Storage → Preparation → Cooking → Plating → Service → Washing → Waste

You want to minimise unnecessary movement.

If your chef has to walk across the entire kitchen every time they need an ingredient, the layout is costing you time and money.

Think about the journey of a product from the moment it arrives at the premises until it reaches the customer.

Then design your kitchen around that journey.

4. Create dedicated work zones

Different activities should have their own areas where possible.

Typical zones include:

Receiving

Where deliveries arrive, are checked and moved into storage.

Dry storage

Shelving for ingredients, packaging and other non-perishable products.

Cold storage

Fridges, freezers and other temperature-controlled storage.

Preparation

Benches, sinks and equipment for food preparation.

Cooking

Ovens, cooktops, grills, fryers and other cooking equipment.

Pass and plating

Where completed meals are assembled and sent to the customer.

Dishwashing

A dedicated area for dirty dishes, cleaning and storage.

Waste

An organised area for food waste, rubbish and recycling.

Separating these activities helps reduce congestion and makes the kitchen easier to manage.

5. Don’t underestimate storage

Storage is one of the easiest things to underestimate when designing a kitchen.

You need somewhere for:

• Food
• Packaging
• Cleaning products
• Crockery
• Glassware
• Small equipment
• Dry goods
• Chemicals
• Staff supplies

If there isn’t enough storage, your kitchen will quickly become cluttered.

That creates inefficiency and can also create food safety problems.

Before buying more shelving, look at what you’re actually storing.

Good storage isn’t simply about having more space.

It’s about making frequently used items easy to access while keeping everything else organised.

6. Choose equipment based on your actual needs

Commercial kitchen equipment can become very expensive very quickly.

Don’t buy equipment simply because it looks impressive or because another restaurant has it.

Ask:

Will this equipment generate enough value to justify its cost?

Consider:

• Capacity
• Frequency of use
• Energy consumption
• Maintenance
• Cleaning requirements
• Staff training
• Available space
• Expected lifespan

A piece of equipment that saves your team several hours every week could be a great investment.

A piece of equipment that gets used twice a month probably isn’t.

7. Think about cleaning from day one

Your kitchen needs to be designed for cleaning, not just cooking.

Consider:

• Access around equipment
• Floor surfaces
• Wall surfaces
• Drainage
• Handwashing facilities
• Cleaning stations
• Storage of chemicals
• Waste removal
• Grease management
• Ventilation

If cleaning something requires your staff to dismantle half the kitchen, it probably won’t get cleaned as effectively as it should.

Make the clean-up process part of the original design.

8. Consider your staff

Your kitchen isn’t being operated by the equipment.

It’s being operated by people.

Think about:

• How many people will work in the kitchen
• Their positions during service
• Where chefs need to stand
• How they communicate
• Where they collect ingredients
• Where finished meals go
• How staff move around each other

You want to minimise unnecessary movement and avoid creating bottlenecks.

A few metres of unnecessary walking, repeated hundreds of times a week, adds up.

9. Build in enough refrigeration

Running out of fridge space during a busy service can create serious operational problems.

Work out your actual refrigeration requirements based on:

• Menu
• Delivery frequency
• Storage requirements
• Peak trading periods
• Prep volumes
• Food safety requirements

Also think about where refrigeration needs to be located.

The fridge shouldn’t necessarily be tucked away in the least convenient corner.

Frequently used ingredients should be accessible to the people who need them.

10. Don’t forget ventilation

Commercial cooking can produce significant amounts of heat, steam, smoke and grease.

Your ventilation system needs to be considered early in the design process.

It can affect:

• Equipment placement
• Ceiling space
• Electrical requirements
• Kitchen temperature
• Staff comfort
• Cleaning
• Building requirements
• Installation costs

Ventilation isn’t something to leave until the end of the project.

11. Plan your utilities

Before purchasing equipment, understand your available:

• Electricity
• Gas
• Water
• Drainage
• Ventilation
• Waste systems

Commercial equipment can have significant power and service requirements.

Make sure the building can actually support the kitchen you are planning.

Changing these services later can be expensive.

12. Design for your busiest service

The real test of a kitchen isn’t how it operates when everything is quiet.

It’s how it operates when you’ve got:

A full dining room, takeaway orders coming through, three tickets waiting on the pass and everyone is trying to work at once.

Walk through that scenario before finalising the layout.

Ask:

• Where does each staff member stand?
• Where do orders come in?
• Where are ingredients collected?
• Where does food go after cooking?
• Where do dirty dishes go?
• Where do delivery orders wait?
• Where are the bottlenecks?

If you can identify the problems before opening, you can fix them before they become expensive operational problems.

The best kitchen isn’t necessarily the biggest

A successful commercial kitchen isn’t about having the most equipment or the largest possible space.

It’s about creating a productive workflow.

Your kitchen should help your team:

Move efficiently → prepare consistently → serve quickly → maintain quality → minimise waste.

Before you spend thousands of dollars on equipment, spend some time mapping out exactly how your kitchen needs to operate.

The right layout can save your business time, labour and money every single day.

Setting up a hospitality business?

Your kitchen is only one part of the operation.

Menu pricing, labour costs, purchasing, staffing, marketing, systems and cash flow all need to work together if the business is going to be profitable.

A better kitchen can improve your operation. A better business system can improve everything around it.

If you’re setting up a new hospitality business or trying to improve an existing one, a Business Check can help identify the areas where you have the biggest opportunities for improvement.