A Commercial Kitchen Design Exercise
Written by Jonathan Griffin
It’s Saturday night. Every table is full. Front-of-house staff move in a choreographed rhythm, anticipating guest needs. In the kitchen, quiet focus reigns as the board fills with fired tickets. It’s controlled chaos—barely. With each team member juggling multiple tasks, even a small disruption can throw everything off. A few extra steps or a poorly placed service item can tip the balance from smooth service to disaster. That’s why thoughtful design of both kitchen and front-of-house spaces is essential.
The kitchen is the engine room of the restaurant. To keep operations running smoothly, it must produce food quickly and consistently, offer clear paths to guest tables, house an efficient dish station, and provide proper storage for everything from raw ingredients to plateware. Crucially, the kitchen must be designed in harmony with the overall restaurant concept—seating capacity, service style, and menu all play a role.
Follow the Ingredient: The Function of Design
When planning kitchen needs, it’s helpful to run an exercise that follows the lifecycle of typical items. Selecting a refrigerated item, a pantry item, and a service item—like a plate or glass—ensures no detail is overlooked. For our purposes, we’ll follow a whole fish to evaluate storage, equipment, workspace, and staff flow. Let’s explore how this single item can shape our design!
Sketch of a Standard Main Street Style Building
The Building:
A Main Street building
Front/rear doors
Full basement
The Restaurant Concept:
Coffee and pastries in the morning
Dinner service with small, elevated, and curated menu
Scratch kitchen with importance placed on local ingredients
Estimated 50-60 seats
Stage 1. Fish Delivery
Questions to ask:
How does the fish enter the restaurant?
Where do we store the fish?
How do we store them? In what do we store them?
When planning for fish deliveries, we must also consider overall delivery logistics, as they significantly impact restaurant operations. The number of weekly deliveries affects storage needs—especially refrigeration—and poorly timed deliveries during service can disrupt the guest experience unless a rear entrance is available.
For this project, the main kitchen will be located at the rear of the building, allowing use of the back door for both deliveries and staff entry. This door will also serve as a secondary emergency exit. To optimize space and access, the main walk-in refrigeration unit will be placed in the basement near the rear wall, with the condensing unit located in the back alley. The walk-in, sized based on menu complexity, delivery frequency, seating capacity, and event needs, will be approximately 8’ x 10’–12’.
Fish deliveries will be brought directly to the basement walk-in. We’ll coordinate with architects to ensure stair placement is code-compliant, convenient, and aligned with the kitchen and back door layout.
Stage 2: Preparation
Sketch of Restaurant Design - Lower Level
Questions to ask:
Where do we butcher and portion the fish?
What equipment is needed?
Where do we store it after portioned?
How do we store it after portioned?
The next step for our fish is butchering and portioning for final cooking. Due to limited space in the main kitchen, we’ll create a small prep area on the lower level next to the walk-in cooler. This space will accommodate 2–3 team members and support both fish prep and daily pastry production (baked upstairs).
We’ll collaborate with architects and engineers to design the necessary MEP systems, including a prep sink, hand sink, and electrical outlets. Storage will be included for small appliances like blenders, Robot Coupes, mixers, and cutting boards.
Prepared items, including portioned fish, will be stored in the walk-in until retrieved by line cooks for service.
Stage 3: Cooking the Fish
Questions to ask:
How are we keeping the fish cold on the cooking line?
How are we cooking the fish?
What small wares do we need to cook the fish, i.e. saute pan, pot, etc.?
On what are we plating the fish? (dish, plate, bowl, board, etc)?
How does the plated fish get to the guest’s table?
120 W Main Kitchen installation in progress
When preparing fish for plating and guest presentation, we must consider process, storage, and kitchen organization and flow.
Process involves cooking methods like frying, sautéing, boiling, or grilling. Flexibility is key, as the menu and techniques may change frequently.
Storage ensures ingredients are kept at proper temperatures and within easy reach.
Kitchen organization and flow refers to the layout and coordination of stations to ensure efficient service.
Kitchen Layout & Flow
The kitchen will be a galley style with a central pass between two hot stations for plating and handoff to the front of house. It will be managed by the chef, with a sous chef assisting during peak times. The kitchen includes:
Three main stations, each staffed by one cook:
Cold Appetizers/Dessert
Fish/Hot Appetizers/Pasta
Meat Roast
A prep area with a production oven, 2-burner range, and stainless steel tables
A dish station at the opposite end
Equipment by Station
Meat Roast: Countertop oven, 2 gas burners, griddle, optional konro grill
Fish/Hot Appetizers/Pasta: Fryer, pasta cooker, French top with oven, salamander
Cold Appetizers/Dessert: Refrigeration only
Storage
Meat Roast: Prep-top fridge with drawers, wall shelving, pan storage under griddle
Fish & Cold Appetizers: Shared prep-top fridge with drawers, tabletop fridge for desserts, wall shelving
Pass: Heated stainless steel cabinet for warming plates
Stage 4: Cleaning the Fish Plate
Questions to ask:
Sketch of Restaurant Design Exercise - Main Level
Where are we dropping off dirty dishes?
How will dishes and glassware be washed?
Where do we store chemicals and cleaning?
Where will we store clean service items (plates, silverware, glasses), pots, pans and smallwares?
The final stage in the life of our fish is cleaning the plate after the meal. Flow is critical when designing the dish station—dirty items must move in one direction toward clean, without creating bottlenecks for staff dropping off dishes.
For this project, the dish station will be located at the end of the main kitchen, providing easy access for both kitchen staff (to clean and restock pans and plates) and front-of-house staff (to drop off dirty dishes from the dining room).
The station will have two sides:
One side with a 3-compartment sink for pots and pans
The other with a single-rack dishwasher for plates, glasses (some cleaned at the bar), and flatware
Dirty items will enter from one end and flow down both sides, with clean items collected at the opposite end. A generous drop zone will be included for both front- and back-of-house use. Additionally, the area will include a chemical storage closet and a mop sink.
We’ll coordinate with MEP engineers to ensure proper layout, including water lines, drains, and grease traps.
With so many moving parts in a functioning restaurant, exercises like this help us visualize how every element of the hospitality space operates. Tracing hypothetical components through their full lifecycle ensures the design is both functional and efficient.
Jonathan Griffin is a classically trained chef and has worked in a variety of restaurants and concepts throughout his career in New York City, Los Angeles and the Midwest. He has experience in Michelin starred fine-dining, farm-to-table, fast-casual, pizza, brewpub, espresso/coffee bars, small- and large-scale catering and events, and has been a restaurant owner.