A new zero waste global food service trend now hot on the block is the shrinking of commercial kitchen spaces. With the costs of commercial rents ballooning and sprawling back-of-house operations consequently hampering workflows and productivity commercial kitchens are finding ways to adapt. Many owners are choosing smaller kitchen equipment that can perform numerous functions to optimize their space.
Enter the condensed kitchen. Think hoodless combi ovens, smaller prep areas and shrinking storage to accommodate on-demand cooking. Besides that, the condensed kitchen makes vertical space as valuable as floor space. So models with stacking options now have increased value. Stacking two or more pieces of equipment on top of each other using special hardware or stands is becoming more commonplace.
Making commercial kitchens green hasn’t been an easy feat, yet several companies have stepped up to the plate. For instance, M.A.R.V.E.L. system provides a demand controlled ventilation (DCV) system that can identify the current status of the cooking equipment, whether off, heating or cooking in progress and then adjusts the exhaust flow rate accordingly, providing better use of energy. Meanwhile, Hoshizaki offers energy efficient refrigerators with the DC features, conserving up to 80% energy.
Now efficiency and style don’t always go hand in hand in the world of commercial kitchen spaces. So this trend is also raising the bar for designers. It’s requiring designers to really step up their creativity game and pull some serious magic out of their bag of tricks. Meanwhile, manufacturers now have to be more innovative in offering more sustainable, space saving equipment.
All of these trends are effectively cutting the size of spaces while maintaining efficiency. In the new commercial kitchen a well-thought-out kitchen layout goes beyond square footage. After all, we are in the age of the shrinking commercial kitchen spaces.
