Designing Commercial Kitchens and Restaurants

Design of Commercial Kitchen / Restaurant include:

• Design of HVAC systems: This would include general Heating Ventilation and Air-Conditioning systems. Generally restaurants have a high density of people in them. High occupancies require adequate outdoor/ treated air as requried by ASHRAE. Air from the washrooms would be requried to be exhausted. Energy or Heat Recovery Ventialtors provide an effective was to recoup the energy / heat which otherwise would go waste.
• Design of commercial Kitchen ventilation: Most kitchen have grease laden vapors to be exhausted. These grease laden vapors are prone to catching fire and therefore must be exhausted through special exhaust hoods governed by NFPA 96. It could be a lot of air which needs to be exhausted, which brings in the need for make-up air. In colder lclimate this outdoor / treated air needs to be treated. There are various way to achieve this. With multiple hoods or larger hoods, it could be a lot of air flow taken out via the kitchen exhaust hood / canopy. Demand ventialtion is a smart way to control the exhaust and corresponding make-up air which will control the amount of air with heat sensors. ASHRAE 90.1 will soon mandate demand ventialtion for all exhaust systems.
• NFPA compliant hoods also require to have dry chemical fire suppression systems. These are designed according to the actuyal appliances under the hood – providing a nozzle for each appliance. If you change the appliance, chances are the nozzle sserving it woild need to be changed as well. This system requries annual testing.
• Design of Plumbing Systems would include general plumbing – domestic cold and hot water, sizing and selection of domestic water heaters and boosters, sanitary and adequate venting.
• Almost all restaurants have grease laden sewage, and the grease and fats must be captured by Grease Interceptors before being discharged to the municipal / city’s sanitary mains.

The Process:

1. Before you sign the lease or buy space for putting in a restaurant, it is prudent to get an engineer to do am assessment of the available services, acces to the outside, preferrably the roof.
2. An interior designer will usually put your concept / dream on the paper. They will work with you to see how best the layout of the new restaurant can be. A Kitchen Consultant will provide the actual Kitchen Layout with appliances and equipment. The Kitchen Consultant provides the layout and the engineers provide services to these.
3. Once the Interior designer or the architect has put together a layout, it might be a good idea to send it to Health Department to see if their requriemetns are met. It is quite common that they will ask to add a hand sink or move one to another place.
4. Once the layout is good to go, the engineers (Mechanical and Electrical) will do the engineering design and produce to the drawings for building permit and construction.
5. There might be inouts from the city plan checkers which might need to change certain things on the design. So it is always prudent to wait start of construction. It is actually not legal to start without the building permit has been issued.