Commercial Kitchen Flow: Tips and Advice to Help You Get It Right

Ideally, you will hire a third party to design your kitchen for you. However, sometimes this simply isn’t possible and at other times, it might be wise to learn a bit more about kitchen design before hiring the design company – so you know you’re getting a good deal. For those of you that fall into the latter category, this article is for you. Today, we’re going to provide you with a basic outline of hot to design a commercial kitchen.

Flow Is the Most Important Thing to Consider When Designing Your Kitchen
You can buy the most powerful ovens, fridges, hobs, etc. use only the most expensive and high quality sideboards and counters, hire the best staff in the world, use the highest quality ingredients, but if you fail to factor flow into your catering kitchen design, then the kitchen will not perform as well as it should.

What is flow? Simply put, it’s the way people move around the kitchen. It involves placing things like preparation areas, food pick up sections, and appliances in a logical manner, so that people move from one to the next in a smooth and easy manner.

Each individual within the kitchen has to be able to flow through the kitchen easily, and also pass each other in a flowing way too. This helps to increase safety and prevents people from bumping into each other, dropping plates, and causing accidents.

If you have trouble picturing what we mean by flow, imagine a factory line. Each person in the line has a clear and defined role, and this role is linked to next role in the line. For instance, in a sandwich factory, the first person might cut the loaf, the second person butters the bread, and the third fills the sandwich.

With good flow, each step is a logical progression. With bad flow it isn’t. Bad flow in this example might be the first person puts filling on the conveyor belt, the second person butters the filling, and there third scoops up the mess and puts it in the sandwich. Yes, there’s a sandwich at the end, but it’s not very well made and it takes longer to do (can you imagine trying to better tuna and sweetcorn? It doesn’t even make sense!).

When a kitchen has good flow, everything is organised. Ingredients are always found in the same location. Preparation areas are always in the same place. Deliveries are always taken to the same area. This means that whenever anyone walks into the kitchen (providing they’re part of the kitchen staff, that is), they know exactly where everything is.

You cannot appreciate the importance of good flow to commercial kitchen design. If you need to know anything, it’s how to create good flow. This consists of sitting down and thinking about all the processes that happen in your kitchen, then thinking about the most logical progression for getting these processes in place.

As long as your kitchen is designed with flow in mind, it will work well. A kitchen with good flow is efficient and profitable, which is all you really want from a commercial kitchen.

If you would like further help and advice about your kitchen design, then please visit http://www.garnersfse.co.uk