Commercial Kitchen Design for Restaurants in India: Layout, Size and Equipment

Most kitchen problems we are called in to fix were decided on a drawing months before opening: a hot line that faces the wrong way, a dish wash that blocks the service door, an exhaust that cannot cope with a tandoor. This guide sets out how we size and lay out a restaurant kitchen in India, what goes in it, and the rules it has to meet, so that the kitchen your staff inherit is one they can run on a Saturday night.

Basis: sizes and costs below are typical figures from Table & Fork projects on leased sites in metro India. Your menu, site shape and local municipal rules will move them.

How big should a restaurant kitchen be?

Start from the format, not the site. A full-service restaurant needs 30 to 40 percent of its floor area as kitchen and back of house, which works out to 1,000 to 1,400 square feet for 100 seats once stores, cold rooms, dish wash and staff areas are included. A QSR with a short menu runs on 300 to 500 square feet. A cafe needs 250 to 400 square feet if the menu is designed around shared prep. A cloud kitchen is all kitchen: 800 to 1,200 square feet serves one or two brands comfortably. Ceiling height matters as much as area, because exhaust ducts, hoods and lighting all live above the line; 10 feet clear is the practical minimum and 12 is better.

What are the zones in a commercial kitchen?

A good kitchen is a straight line with no backtracking. Goods arrive at receiving, move into dry stores and cold rooms, go to prep, then to the hot line, then to the pass, and dirty plates return to dish wash by a route that never crosses the food going out. In India we add one more rule that FSSAI inspectors look for: vegetarian and non-vegetarian prep are physically separated, with their own boards, sinks and refrigeration, and raw meat and fish never share a chiller shelf with ready-to-eat food.

• Receiving and stores: a weighing point at the back door, dry store with racking off the floor, chemical store kept apart from food.
• Cold storage: walk-in cold room for a full-service kitchen, reach-in and under-counter chillers at each station, a separate freezer. Size for three days of stock, not a week.
• Prep: separate vegetable, meat and fish benches, each with its own sink and hand wash point.
• Hot line: ranges, tandoor, flat top, fryers and ovens under one continuous hood, with the pass directly in front of it.
• Pass and plating: heat lamps or a hot pass, cold pass for salads and desserts, where the expediter stands.
• Dish wash: scrape, pre-rinse, dishwasher, clean rack, with a route back to the floor that avoids the pass.
• Staff: hand wash at every entry, lockers and a changing area, which the licence inspection asks for.

What equipment does a restaurant kitchen need?

The menu writes the equipment list, which is why we do not size a kitchen until the menu is fixed. An Indian kitchen typically needs high-output range burners because Indian cooking uses more heat than a European line, a tandoor in its own enclosure with its own exhaust, a flat top, one or two fryers, a salamander, a combi oven for volume and consistency, and the refrigeration above. Choose 304 grade stainless steel for every bench and hood; the cheaper grades rust within a year in a humid kitchen. Buy the exhaust hood, the refrigeration and the range from suppliers with service engineers in your city, because these are the three things that fail at 9pm on a Saturday.

Exhaust, gas, electrical and drainage

The services are the expensive and invisible part. Exhaust needs a hood over the entire hot line with grease filters, a duct run to the roof that the landlord has agreed to, and fresh air make-up so that the dining room does not smell of the kitchen. In Delhi NCR and increasingly in other metros, the pollution control board expects an electrostatic precipitator or a scrubber on the exhaust of a commercial kitchen, so budget for it. Gas should come from a bank of cylinders or a piped supply in a ventilated enclosure outside the kitchen, with leak detectors and a shut-off valve at the line. A 100 seat full-service kitchen typically needs 40 to 80 kW of connected electrical load, and the landlord has to confirm that capacity exists before you sign. Floor drains with a grease trap, non-slip tiles with coved edges, and walls tiled or clad to at least seven feet are not optional; the municipal licence inspection and the fire NOC both check them.

How much does a restaurant kitchen cost in India?

Kitchen equipment, exhaust, refrigeration and gas typically take 20 to 25 percent of the total project budget, which is 40 to 90 lakh on a 100 to 120 seat full-service restaurant and 10 to 20 lakh on a QSR. Imported equipment roughly doubles the price of the hot line and only earns its keep where the menu depends on it, such as a combi oven or a specialist pizza oven. Buying used equipment saves money on benches and racking and costs money on refrigeration and exhaust, which should always be new.

Which rules does a kitchen have to meet?

Four sets. FSSAI's hygiene and sanitary requirements for food businesses, which cover separation of raw and cooked, hand wash points, pest control, water quality and temperature control, and which the licence inspection is based on. The fire NOC, which looks at the gas installation, extinguishers at the line, a fire suppression system inside the hood for larger kitchens, and clear exits. The pollution control board's consent where the city requires it for kitchen exhaust and effluent. And the municipal health and trade licence, which repeats most of the above and adds drainage and waste handling.

The five mistakes we fix most often

• Sizing the kitchen to the leftover space after the dining room is drawn, instead of to the menu.
• A hot line that faces away from the pass, so every plate travels twice.
• One exhaust hood for the tandoor and the range, which never clears the smoke.
• No fresh air make-up, which makes the kitchen 40 degrees in May and pulls kitchen air into the dining room.
• Dish wash placed for plumbing convenience rather than for the flow of dirty plates.

Kitchen and floor layout, equipment specification and MEP coordination are part of the Table & Fork culinary programme, and every kitchen we draw is checked against the menu it has to cook. If you are planning a venue in Delhi NCR, Pune or Bengaluru, our food consultant page explains how that work runs.