Operations: Ace of Space

Operating successfully in a small kitchen requires a down-to-earth analysis of menu priorities, table-turn goals and training needs.

By Christine LaFave, Associate Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 4/1/2008

Creating a menu based on the design of a kitchen isn’t glitzy or romantic in the way that some cuisine-constructing stories are, but the practice often is a necessity. With rents soaring in many markets, a given chunk of change secures less space than it did five years ago, sometimes forcing restaurateurs to scale down their plans and opt for a place with a smaller footprint. A smaller kitchen, in turn, requires that chefs aim for a menu composed of dishes that are simple to prepare and that help maximize the efficiency of the kitchen’s design and equipment.

David Scott Peters, a restaurant consultant and the founder of Smile Button Enterprises in Peoria, Ariz., recognizes how difficult it can be to balance menu ambitions with kitchen-space realities. Where chefs often err is in composing dishes that cannot regularly be prepared quickly or accurately based on the equipment the restaurant has. "It’s their dream menu, but they never took into account where the garde manger was going to be," Peters says.

Small and Smaller

In San Francisco, Chef Dennis Leary (formerly of Rubicon) made practicality his top priority in establishing a menu for his 20-seat restaurant Canteen. "Your physical space limits what you do," says Leary, also Canteen’s owner. "It’s like writing a poem … it sort of forces you to be inventive. It just makes your life easier if you can rule out [some items and say], ‘Oh, I’m not going to do duck l’orange here.’"

For one week in March, Canteen’s menu featured a choice of four first courses, four entrées and four desserts. Among the selections: green garlic soup with pearl barley, beef tongue and poached egg; veal tenderloin with leeks, fennel, porcini-mushroom ragoût and sweetbreads; and a vanilla soufflé.

"A small space means a small menu," Leary says. "All I can advertise is high-quality."

Having learned how to make the most of his kitchen at Canteen since its 2004 opening, Leary next plans to open a breakfast-and-lunch spot—in a 250-square-foot space. "I can only get one little oven in there," he says, adding that all warm dishes will come out of the oven because there will be no open flame in the restaurant. The menu on any given day will include an egg dish, a pastry, no more than a couple of sandwiches and beverages.

"Ideally a cook should not walk; he should just stand there," Leary says, adding that as many items as possible should be at waist-height and within arm’s reach. "You start synchronizing your moves over time. If you make the same thing every day, you want to start making it a little faster every day."

Restaurateurs who are designing a small kitchen should start out with as few "gadgets" as possible and "underdesign rather than overdesign," he adds. "You can always fill things in," Leary says.

Jimmy Bannos, executive chef of Chicago’s Heaven on Seven restaurants, agrees that devising a workable menu is the most essential element of learning to work in a small kitchen. "If you’re not organized, forget it," he says. At Bannos’ Heaven on Seven Wabash Ave. location, a tiny L-shaped kitchen is equipped with a two-burner stove, a flat-top grill, a six-burner stove, two deep-fryers and five steam wells. Still, with only three people preparing food (himself included) when the location opened, Bannos averaged 600-800 customers daily at lunch.

Bannos suggests that operators considering storage possibilities for their small kitchen look first to take advantage of vertical space. "If the ceiling’s pretty high, you’re pretty good," he says. "You can always build shelves up high." Bannos had a walk-in refrigerator installed in the Wabash Ave. location of Heaven on Seven when it opened, but he eventually converted the unit into a reach-in space.

"Simplicity is awesome," he says. "I like the comfortable [spaces] where all you have to do is turn around."

With a menu that varies daily or weekly, thinking about menu needs as far in advance as possible will help an operator plan space needs and purchase priorities. If the operation wants to make use of a whole animal—a pig, for example—then the chef must figure out when he or she will have the opportunity to break down the meat so that it can be stored more easily.

Upsides of Small

Major benefits of tighter working quarters, Bannos and Peters say, are reduced product loss and a more-productivity-attuned workforce.

With smaller product inventories in the kitchen—Peters says, "there’s less on the shelves to be stolen or wasted." Bannos notes, too, that without a basement or another out-of-sight area, workers don’t have places to go where they could, hypothetically, shirk off. "It keeps everybody honest," he says.

Peters learned the importance of keeping inventories small while serving as director of operations at Coyote Springs Brewing Co. and Cafe in Phoenix.

"Our food cost was low, but our profits were down," he says. Part of the problem, Peters discovered, lay in the fact that when the restaurant made its own sauces, it made them in large batches.

Given large vats of condiments or sauces, cooks for the first few days "will just scoop [the product] out," he says. But as more days pass and the kitchen needs to make the product last until the next batch is made or the next shipment arrives, cooks become less wasteful.

"That kind of ‘every ounce counts’ [attitude] is what’s needed, but it’s easier to do when you have less to begin with," Peters says. "It also teaches your cooks that you’re not made of money and that everything is precious, so treat it that way." The lesson is one as pertinent for inventory control as it is for kitchen-space management.