Kitchen Design 101

Design is everything. Far from a bold statement, it becomes truer the deeper you delve into it. A good design, when it comes to kitchens, can make or break efficiency, can stall or inspire creativity and ultimately, can affect a hotel or outlet’s customer base and revenue.

Steve Jobs famously said: “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

That means getting kitchen design right the first time is one of the most important aspects of your operation. If the design is right for the type of restaurant and cuisine, your kitchen will be instantly productive.

But designing a kitchen involves more than a few elements, from meeting the bottom line costs to pleasing the chef who will be running it, to ensuring that ventilation, stations, layout, heating and cooling and productivity are all considered.

And it’s not simply a one-kitchen-fits all exercise — certain chefs have certain demands — but more than that, as the practitioners of their craft, they know what’s needed in a kitchen far better than designers, owners, and even managers.

Bass Salah, general manager and head of the hospitality division for construction company ISG, says: “Chefs are very meticulous in the layout and detailing of the kitchen. They consider design from a very functional perspective, ensuring flow and efficiency of the kitchen spaces they work in.

“They add a lot of value by cramming a lot of equipment into small spaces. They understand very well the practicality of construction and the technical services that make the kitchens work.”

But designers and construction/fitout companies have a budget to meet, set by the building owners and operators, and often, the best design isn’t the cheapest. In the Middle East, with a low profit margin for construction and plenty of competition, and a centuries-old tradition of bartering, the lowest quote is often the one that wins the job.

Salah has seen more than his fair share of hotel kitchen construction and says there is always a challenge between FOH and BOH.

“Chefs always want more space, and restaurant managers want to give them less,” he says, “Mainly because the kitchens are not revenue-producing spaces and therefore the bigger the front of house, the more covers, the better the ROI. Striking a balance where everybody wins is the key challenge.”

Cost notwithstanding, from designers to construction companies to kitchens suppliers to chefs, the verdict is unanimous: get your chef involved as soon as possible.

Malcolm Webster, executive chef of St Regis Saadiyat Island, gave a case in point earlier this year while speaking at the Chef & Ingredients 2015 advisory panel: “Hotels are designed without an operational team, which then comes in with different ideas, and by then the plans are already outdated.”

He continued: “When you’re a kitchen consultant, it’s probably easier to design a kitchen with a bratt pan rather than a pressure bratt pan because it’ll get assigned straightaway. You don’t have to educate an owner’s representative on why a pressure bratt pan is better. Yes, it’s going to cost you X amount of thousand dirhams more, but it’s multi-functional. It’s efficient, it’s energy–saving.”

For the designers, he says, “A bratt pan is cheaper, it’s easier to sign off, you don’t have to redesign, do any more work, you don’t have to explain the benefits. So owners need to be educated about this.”

Webster says that a previous kitchen he’s worked in felt like it was designed by someone who has “never worked in a hotel kitchen before”.

“If a chef is involved it’s always better,” he explains. “The kitchen is good, but did they [the designers] waste a lot of the owner’s money? Yes. Could I have saved the owner some money? Probably, yes.”

Salah agrees, saying that it’s imperative for hotels and outlets to consider long-term value over upfront cost.

“Equipment carries a high portion of the capital expenditure on the overall kitchen so if value engineering is required, then that’s a great starting point,” he explains. “It is, however, imperative to consider the preventative maintenance plans for the kitchen equipment and the service coverage in the Middle East.”

He added: “You can easily find yourself trying to save money by purchasing cheap equipment only to find yourself forking out the costs in maintenance.”

From the hotel perspective, Murlidhar Rao, senior VP of operations at Qatar-based Aiana Hotels & Resorts, says that while involving chefs at design and/or fitout stage is essential, sometimes the capex or opex must take precedence.

“Very often, chefs do mix ‘nice-to-have’ with ‘must have’ elements and end up with equipment that is not cost-effective to operate and also, will end up being used for only a marginal amount of time.

“For example, sometimes chefs ask for sandwich grillers, which are cost-efficient only if more than 50 orders are sold per meal period, for example, and more often than not, these numbers are not achieved.”

Most chefs Caterer spoke confessed they would have preferred to be part of the kitchen design, and that design is one of the most important aspects of whether they can create magic in the kitchen.

Maxime Le Van, head chef, Boca, agreed, and made his views known at the Chef & Ingredients 2015 advisory panel: “It depends on what stage you get involved. The company will come up with the plan; the chefs will review the plan. It’s all about double checking.”

When it comes to kitchen design, it’s not just stainless steel vs. wood, open versus closed — back-of-house designers must consider workflow, ergonomics, hygiene, efficiency for energy, modular equipment, ventilation and lighting, storage, pest control, waste management and maintenance.

The other consideration is the constantly changing staff at outlets in the Middle East — most of our chefs admitted that when new chefs come into a kitchen, they often ask for a kitchen re-design, refurbishment or refit. And with 56.6% of the Caterer Middle East Head Chef Survey respondents changing jobs every three years, it’s important to get the design right.

Sang Lee, executive chef, Solutions Leisure Group, which manages Asia Asia, Karma Café, Q43 and Lock, Stock and Barrel in Dubai, talked about finding himself in a situation where the kitchen layout simply didn’t fit the needs of the new menu.

Even though Lee was not a fan of some kitchen designs, he was quick to fix it so that the restaurant didn’t experience much down time. “Things were moved around or fixed very quickly to my liking,” he says. “New equipment was ordered and the kitchen layout was redesigned to make it all more efficient and easy for the service.”

Christian Merieau, managing director and partner at MMAC Design Associates, often works with hotels in the region on redesigning kitchen spaces, and says that what many consider to be the challenges of refurbishment are actually, for a designer, an opportunity to work with chefs and to “design outside of the box”.

Speaking about a successful project where he is facing some interesting challenges, he says: “We are currently working on the refurbishment of the Rotana Fujairah Al Aqah Beach Resort, where all the MEP equipment was to remain untouched. We have transformed a large dining hall into an elaborate restaurant with intimate dining areas which are near live show kitchens with ambient counters.”

Merieau sympathises with the constrictive parameters chefs often face when coming into a hotel with a poorly designed kitchen.

“Once,” he remembers, “we worked on the design of a hotel project in an existing building with a very small floor plate that was never intended by the architects to be a hotel. The BOH was so tight that most of the service flow was passing through the public areas, which created a serious discomfort for the hotel staff and the guests alike.”

With the competitive nature of F&B in the Middle East, particularly in Dubai, design is a consideration that outlets simply can’t emphasise enough. Yet the big question is how to stay financially competitive, but still have the most modern equipment?

Rao suggests that flexible design is the best route, with modular installation always left as an option, which could cut down on time lost when refitting and be a great value-engineered option.

He points out that kitchen design is now moving from something that is seen as a BOH, hidden element, to a work place with an opportunity to inspire creativity and create a sense of pride.

“Kitchens are now being seen as spaces that create energy and can give inspiration,” he enthuses,“Which can then be translated into the food that’s being plated.”

Ultimately, it’s important to remember that the kitchen, after all, is the heart of the operation — the most powerful part of any outlet —the place with the power to bring the childhood delight of first tasting a delicacy rushing back, and the power to keep us returning again for our next taste. And that is worth its weight in fit-out costs.