One of the more popular trends in the industry today, is the use of a display restaurant kitchen. With marketing dollars spent being at an all-time high, by adding an internal entertainment factor can be a much more cost-effective approach to marketing your restaurant. A display restaurant kitchen design will help to ease the business’ marketing burden by increasing the word of mouth factor such as is the case for today’s more popular restaurants. We have designed several such projects such as Sassafras Lounge, Profeta Farm Market and just about every foodservice operation we’ve designed in health clubs over the years, so we are highly experienced in developing this type of concept.
Everyone loves a show! Although, putting valuable capital towards a display restaurant kitchen in order to put on that show can get pricey if you are not careful. Putting together a display restaurant kitchen concept is a bit different from your typical restaurant kitchen design, so ensuring the same operation efficiency can be a bit challenging, depending on the concept.
One thing to keep in mind is your customer’s primary focal point, which is usually the grill or an exposed flame area. It is human nature for our eyes to be drawn to what is flickering, and in an open restaurant kitchen layout, that would typically fall to a wood fired pizza oven, grill or animated sauté station should many liquors be used in the recipes. This being the case, we typically recommend higher end cooking equipment since it will be visible to the customers and will most likely be easier to maintain and clean in order to keep the original shiny appearance.
Probably the most important aspect of your display restaurant kitchen is cleanliness… There is nothing worse than spending thousands of dollars on a beautiful restaurant kitchen layout, only to have it overshadowed by the perception of it being not clean. I’ve added a few key points regarding this below to keep in mind as you progress through your design with your restaurant consultant.
- Adding more hand sinks than are necessary from a health department standpoint to ensure staff are seen washing their hands on a regular basis.
- Keep the view-able kitchen area to a minimum wherever possible to minimize the exposure of the inevitable kitchen mess that comes from a busy service period.
- Choose your heat lamps and kitchen lighting wisely. Lighting being placed improperly can add focus to areas that you want to go unnoticed, such as the paper towel dispensers above hand sinks.
- Hats, hats, hats! Make sure everyone wears a CLEAN hat! Enough said.
When you are putting together a display restaurant kitchen , you are offering to put on a show for your customers as much as you are providing them with a fabulous meal so make sure you are ready to “put it all out there” for everyone to see, because they will see it and they will share it… The good, the bad and the ugly.
Cheers!