5 Mistakes We Keep Seeing in Restaurant Fitouts

Restaurant fitouts rarely go wrong because of one huge mistake.

More often, the problems start with small decisions made too early, something missed between the drawings and the build, or a kitchen that looked fine on paper but doesn’t work when the restaurant is full on a Friday night.

We’ve worked across food service consulting, kitchen design, interior design, equipment and construction, so we tend to see the same issues come up again and again.

Here are five of the most common.

1. Designing the room before the concept is properly locked in

It’s easy to want to get started on the floor plan. Everyone wants to see what the restaurant is going to look like, and choosing finishes and working through the layout is usually the more exciting part of the process.

But before you start moving walls around, you need to know how the venue is actually going to operate.

How many covers are you planning for? Is it full table service, counter service or self-service? How much of the menu is cooked to order? What needs to be prepared in advance? How much storage will you need? Where will deliveries come in and where does waste leave?

These decisions have a direct impact on the layout.

We’ve seen projects where the layout has been redrawn two or three times because the concept continued to change after the design had already started. A change that sounds simple — adding more covers or changing the service style, for example — can affect the kitchen footprint, bar position, storage and staff circulation.

And every redraw costs money and time.

That time matters when you’re paying rent on a site that isn’t trading yet.

Get the concept settled first

It’s much cheaper to change your mind while you’re looking at a drawing than it is once the slab has been marked out, services have been installed and trades are booked.

A good restaurant fitout starts with understanding how the business needs to operate, then designing the space around it.

2. Not giving the kitchen enough room to work properly

One of the most common mistakes we see is treating the kitchen as the space that’s left over after the dining room has been worked out.

It should be the other way around.

Your kitchen is what allows you to deliver the menu and service you’re planning. It needs enough room for equipment, preparation, storage, staff movement and cleaning — and it needs to work when the restaurant is operating at full capacity, not just when it’s empty.

This is where kitchen design and food service consulting make a real difference.

We’ve seen extraction hoods sized for an equipment run that later becomes larger, cool rooms that don’t have enough capacity for the final menu, and passes that work perfectly well with two chefs but become a bottleneck when four people are trying to plate at the same time.

These things aren’t always obvious from a floor plan.

You notice them when the kitchen is busy.

By that point, fixing the problem can be expensive. Moving an exhaust system, changing drainage or relocating a grease arrestor can mean opening up floors, ceilings and walls that have already been finished.

The kitchen needs to be designed around the way the venue is actually going to operate – not simply fitted into whatever space is left.

3. Treating council approvals and compliance as something to sort out later

Planning and compliance aren’t just paperwork at the end of a restaurant fitout. They can determine what you’re able to build in the first place.

Fire egress, accessibility, food safety requirements and the development approval pathway all need to be considered while the layout is being developed.

For example, whether a project requires a Development Application (DA) or can proceed through a Complying Development Certificate (CDC) can affect the process and timing. The building’s change-of-use classification can also have implications for fire separation and egress requirements, which can then affect where walls can be positioned.

It’s much easier to find this out before the walls are framed than afterwards.

The same applies to services and local authority requirements. Grease arrestor sizing, for example, needs to be considered early. Getting it wrong can create problems with approvals or final inspections and, ultimately, delay your opening.

And when you’re paying rent and staff while waiting to open, even a relatively small delay can become an expensive one.

Don’t leave compliance until the end

The earlier planning, building and compliance requirements are understood, the more options you have.

A conversation with council or the relevant authority at the planning stage is a lot easier than having to change finished work because something wasn’t checked before construction started.

4. Running the design, kitchen and construction as separate jobs

A restaurant fitout can involve a lot of different people.

You might have an interior designer, a kitchen or food service consultant, an equipment supplier, engineers and a builder — all working on different parts of the same project.

The problem isn’t that these specialists are doing their jobs. The problem is what happens in the gaps between them.

We’ve seen situations where the interior design has been finalised before the extraction requirements are confirmed, meaning a bulkhead then needs to be redesigned.

Or the kitchen layout changes after services have already been installed.

Or equipment is specified later in the process and needs drainage, power or another service in a different location from what was originally allowed for.

Each change might seem relatively small.

But they add up.

This is where restaurant fitout budgets can start to move. Not necessarily because of one major mistake, but because of a series of variations, redesigns and delays caused by the different parts of the project not being coordinated properly.

The kitchen design needs to work with the equipment.
The equipment needs to work with the services.
The services need to work with the building.

And the whole lot needs to work with the way the restaurant is going to operate.

That’s much easier when someone is looking at the project as a whole.

5. Designing the layout without input from someone who has actually run a restaurant

A floor plan can look perfect and still be difficult to work in.

That’s because a drawing doesn’t show what happens when the venue is busy.

Where do staff actually walk?
Where do dirty plates come back?
Can two chefs get past each other?
Is there enough room at the pass?
Can someone get from the cool room to the prep area without crossing the main service path?
Where does the front-of-house team wait when the kitchen is sending out a large order?

These are practical questions, but they’re incredibly important.

We’ve seen storage positioned somewhere that looked logical on a plan but meant staff had to walk across the venue every time they needed something. We’ve seen passes that worked for a small team but became congested as soon as service picked up. Even something as simple as the position of an EFTPOS terminal can interfere with a staff pathway if it hasn’t been thought through properly.

This is why practical hospitality experience needs to be part of the design process.

Before a layout is locked in for construction, walk through it with someone who understands how a kitchen and dining room actually operate.

It can take an afternoon.

Fixing the same problem after you’ve opened the doors can take years.