Unfortunately, space constraint is one thing that you will face as a restaurant owner and what you want to do is to maximize the size of your sitting/ dining-in area and minimize the size of your working space (i.e. your kitchen) because it just makes simple business sense to do that. You will want to increase the number of tables and seats in the dining-in area to increase revenue, and you have to do that at the expense of your working area.
1. Planning for your Kitchen Equipment
Even if you have huge area for your kitchen, it is very important for you to know the exact dimensions of the equipment you will be getting.
Planning is absolutely important and it should be finalized at least a month before the renovation of your restaurant starts. This is especially so if your equipment has to be imported. Imagine the hassle if we would have to send back the equipment just because it does not fit. It is your job as the restaurant owner to work with your kitchen consultant to ensure that such hiccups do not happen.
From my personal experience, you have to be really sharp when dealing with the kitchen. It is the heart of your restaurant so you do not want the heart to have any problems, do you? Common things to look out for:
- does the equipment in the CAD (Computer Aided Design) file tally with the equipment list? i.e. Did the kitchen consultant miss out anything in his drawing that you have ordered? For your reference, this is how a CAD file looks like:
- is there a flow in the working area inside the kitchen? for example, do you want the dishwashing area to be in the middle of the kitchen or the side? The side would be better most of the time, because you do not want the dishwasher to block the other kitchen helpers serving the food by being in the middle of nowhere.
What to expect from your Kitchen Consultant:
- any decent kitchen consultant would do up a CAD file for your allocated kitchen space with their proposed plan of where to place your equipment that you are going to order from them
- if they offer you the service, get a 3D design from them
- they have to work very closely with your Interior Designer and submit their finalized plan of the kitchen layout so that your ID can integrate the kitchen layout to his entire restaurant layout
2. Prepping your Staff
The most important man in the restaurant, i.e. the Chef spends most of his time in the kitchen. Imagine you have just poached this really talented chef from a rival restaurant. You offer him a higher pay, better privileges, better working hours and he's sold. The first day he reports for work, he gets the shock of his life because the working space he has is miniscule. How'd you expect him to work?
Well, for me, i would probably face that problem when I hire my second chef (I have already hired my first). How do I avoid such morale issues? I would start by being entirely honest about the small working space he's gonna be working in, and offer him some compensation such as better pay, better prospects (promotions etc. etc.)
As a general guideline, if you are working with a really tight space, I would suggest you have at least 70cm for your walking area around the kitchen. That would give you enough space for two over-sized people to brush against each other. Hahaha.
That's all I have for now. I will definitely go into more detail on how I would plan the kitchen and what kinds of equipment you need for different kinds of food that you can sell.
Feel free to contact me via email if you're looking for a good kitchen consultant. Have a great weekend ahead!
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