Need help designing cafe kitchen

phill99

I cant see why you cant have the door to the kitchen on the left hand side of the front wall, currently where the cooker is. Then have the access point to the counter on the left so that effectively, you come out of the new door and turn to your right, straight into the customer area.

This will allow you to have the sink out of sight line.

Respectfully, I think you need to start looking at this from the 'outside -in' not 'inside out'. ie, focus on the customer experience, not whats easiest for you.

rochja

A couple of, I hope constructive thoughts: Since this is a games cafe I assume the emphasis is on games rather than cafe, and I further assume your target market is likely to spend several hours at a time on the premises. From this I conclude there could be a high repeat custom from drinks but only limited repeat custom from food. If so you need to provide drinks with a high profit margin and food that swallows as little space as possible [pardon the pun] and is very easy to prepare and clear away. That means reconstituted soft drinks - the syrup is extremely cheap - and wraps filled with prepared fillings possibly from a small display area front of house. Wraps pack flat and fillings store easily in a fridge. Wraps and cakes can be provided in flat packed cardboard boxes in the hope you will sell products to take away too. It works for cakes in Waitrose. Soft drinks can be served in recyclable disposable cups with waste receptacles by a number of tables. If you can save on storage space and work surfaces in the kitchen you should find room for a mini office. Have a look at how your local subway works its food preparation.

Savvy_Sue

EssentialParadox wrote: »

I actually specifically chose to put the sink at the doorway so both kitchen and counter staff have easy access to washing hands. I think I can move the sink to the top right corner and put a handwashing basin near the doorway in its place. Because it'll be narrower against the wall, it should alleviate the blocked doorway concern.

I do not think you can have a commercial kitchen WITHOUT a separate handwashing sink - when we were setting up a (domestic) mother and baby home we had to put a separate handwashing sink into the kitchen!!!

I don't know where you are, but see if you can get Go going ... it's an easy game to learn, takes a lifetime to master, but can be set up to give a reasonably even game even between beginners and advanced players.

firefox1956

Savvy Sue is correct..........
You MUST have separate handwashing sinks.
However they can be very small units, mine are only 12 inches square.
They fix onto the side of the main sink units.
HTH

EssentialParadox

I made a few new modifications to the design…



Some of the changes you can't see:
- I added a raised wall around the front counter like most cafes have,
- I put in a shorter cake display so we can use the top as counter space,
- and I added a drinks fridge under the coffee station.

What you can see is that I've added a hand washing basin in the top left kitchen corner, a little staff coat rack area just behind the kitchen, and I put some bins next to the dirty dishes area (seems like a logical place.)

I think this is looking pretty solid now. We have space for dirty dishes, space for food prep, space for drink prep, space for cake prep, and that space with those wooden shelves (which would actually be stainless steel shelves in reality) can be made into a half-depth counter with shelving above and below if needed. I think next step is to take it to the council's food hygiene person and see if they approve of the kitchen layout before we go ahead with anything.

We really appreciate everyone's input. I think it's a much better layout now! Please keep any further suggestions coming in. I think we're mostly there but there may still be other things to consider.

EssentialParadox

phill99 wrote: »

I cant see why you cant have the door to the kitchen on the left hand side of the front wall, currently where the cooker is. Then have the access point to the counter on the left so that effectively, you come out of the new door and turn to your right, straight into the customer area.

This will allow you to have the sink out of sight line.

phill99 — Last night I tried your suggestion of aligning the doorways together. It has a few benefits to that approach, primarily that you can walk to the back of the cafe without having to go lengthways through the kitchen.



However it ended up having less space, both out front and in the kitchen. The measurements just wouldn't seem to work without me needing to make the areas deeper. Your note about hiding dirty dishes is valid though so will keep thinking about it but saloon doors into the kitchen on the other layout seems an easy solution.

kazwookie

Do you have a budget and business plan for all this?
Food costings?
How much is the rent?
How much is commercial refuse removal?
Pest control
What is the budget for the fixtures / fittings/ crockery etc
How much ££ are you forecasting?
How much for wages? / uniforms
How much for water . gas . electric

EssentialParadox

paddyrg wrote: »

Can you push the backwall of the kitchen to make more use of that space on the way to the garage? I can see the level isn't level, but even recessed shelves will help with kitchen space.

Also, you might want to think of some way to the garage that doesn't go through the kitchen, for when you have to move a broken table/oversize buggy/whatever

I don't think we can do the former but your suggestion to get to the rear area without going through the kitchen is valid. At the end of the day, it's quite a small cafe and I don't expect staff to be rushing around like in a restaurant setting. However if it turns out I'm wrong, I have a plan B… If we find staff regularly need access through the kitchen to the garage, we can simply add another door by the wall beside the washroom. That would allow staff to bypass the kitchen and be quite an easy fix too if we plan for it from the outset. Although I'm going to bring it up with our contractor—he might just suggest a door there anyway for health & safety.

EssentialParadox

kazwookie wrote: »

Do you have a budget and business plan for all this?
Food costings?
How much is the rent?
How much is commercial refuse removal?
Pest control
What is the budget for the fixtures / fittings/ crockery etc
How much ££ are you forecasting?
How much for wages? / uniforms
How much for water . gas . electric

Pro tip: If you're ever looking for a commercial property space, check with the local council. They're reasonable to deal with but, more importantly, have very reasonable rent. We were originally looking at shops for £25-35k per annum then we found this place with Exeter council for only £14k! That's slightly over £1000 per month. It has the current w/c and only needs a kitchen fitted but the low rent means we have a lot more money to do it with.

We're expecting the cost for having the kitchen fitted, including partition walls, counter, plumbing, and electric, minus any appliances will come in around £4-6k. As for all your other questions, I think you're just doing due dilligence with hypotheticals . But I am happy to send the business plan in private if you're genuinely interested in the details.

Savvy_Sue

EssentialParadox wrote: »

As for all your other questions, I think you're just doing due dilligence with hypotheticals .

We can be a bit like that over here, but that's because we'd rather you went 'whoops, hadn't thought of that! better factor another few £k of expenditure in' now than have you come back in a few months time going '!!!!!!, hadn't realised we'd be liable for that, where do we find another few £k, the place is already running at a loss!'

We've also all seen the bright new cafes opening all over the place, only to close again a few weeks later. Obviously a few survive, but I'd say that most don't.

I think a very valid point was made earlier about the nature of a games cafe: people will probably drink more than they eat. But I'd suggest that you need to be quite conservative in your estimates of how many drinks the average player will consume over the length of their visit: I don't know if you're aiming to attract children who'll need to have parents in tow (you might want to consider a lower age limit for children being left, btw!) but I always 'rationed' what I bought when I was out with my boys, because with four of you, it gets so expensive!