4
Apr/12

Range Hoods and the Importance of Tempered Air

by under Exhaust Systems, General Kitchen Design

The following post was provided by The Range Hood Store.

 

Keeping A Kitchen Cleaner With Range Hoods

Kitchens collect grease and grime even with a minimum of use. The reason is simple: vapors from cooked foods have a heavier molecular weight than ambient air. A range hood captures these heavy cooking vapors and keeps the kitchen clean and there’s less build-up of grease and grime on other kitchen appliances and surfaces. Today’s range hoods are built for regular use with most any type of kitchen range.

The Importance Of Tempered Air

There’s another very important reason to install a range hood in the kitchen: to keep oil and grease vapors from becoming hazardous. Frying oils are the biggest culprits in grease build-up. This is true even when the amount of oils is kept to a minimum. Greasy range surfaces can be the cause of kitchen fires.

When oily vapors rise, the range hood processes them into clean, safe particulate that makes the kitchen environment healthier. Keeping the temperature of air in and around the kitchen range also assures accurate cooking and baking temperatures. Commercial kitchens rely on efficient air processing with large range hoods for this reason. In addition, tempered air helps keep temperatures comfortable for professional cooks and bakers.

Sizing A Range Hood

Depending on the amount of use, the size of a range hood plays an important role in its overall efficiency. Today’s range hoods are available in a wide range of sizes. One other important point to be aware of before purchasing a range hood is the motor’s power. There are variables in motor horsepower for different range hood sizes. A range hood basically operates with an induced draft fan that takes air into the hood and then releases it through the duct-work attached to the range hood.

Today’s range hoods, however, have many hi-tech advantages like filtration units built into the hood chamber. These filtration units make the job of cleaning and maintaining a range hood much easier than in earlier versions. For those in the commercial cooking or baking industries, it’s a simple matter of changing a filter. Some of these are HEPA filters. HEPA filters are an industry standard used in mechanical operations where clean air is a necessity.

HEPA filters are constructed from custom materials that offer higher levels of efficiency and less maintenance. Regular maintenance of a range hood is important to avoid mechanical failures that occur from heavy build-up of soil and grease on mechanical parts. As build-up occurs, the motor works harder and eventually the build-up clogs the entire unit rendering it inoperable. Fortunately, today’s range hoods require a minimum of maintenance and are built to last.

Greening A Kitchen With A Range Hood

In many areas, commercial kitchens are required to follow compliance regulations regarding emissions released into outdoor air from ductwork attached to operating range hoods. Usually, regulatory compliance focuses on the volume of air being released into the atmosphere by commercial range hoods. Check with local, county and federal regulatory agencies on compliance requirements that apply.

The Range Hood Store is a leader in kitchen appliances and offers a wide variety of stainless steel range hoods. Founded on superior products and even better customer service The Range Hood Store has years of experience helping customers build their dream kitchens.

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31
Jan/12

Selecting a Restaurant Location II

by under Selecting a Location

Returning to that highly talented, but unfortunate French couple who bought that successful doughnut shop… Unlike some business ventures, the reason they failed was not their lack of capital investment, customer service skills or culinary talent for that matter. The reason they closed their doors was simply the location.

Some of you may say… Well, that doesn’t make sense? There was a successful business in that space for 20 years and the new owners did everything correctly so based on those aspects alone, they should have had some chance of success. In many respects I would agree with this thought process, but for this example of failure specifically, I would not be looking at what the new owners did wrong, but I would be looking at what the former owners did right.

In this instance, the location of the doughnut was on corner where thousands of people walked by every morning on their way to work. They offered some good quality products that were served quickly by a pleasant staff so it was no surprise that hundreds of people stopped in on their way to work everyday for a coffee and doughnut.

This property was however lightly traveled by lunch time since it was located close to a train station and most likely the morning commuters were having lunch somewhere close to their place of business. Conversely on the way home from work, this fantastic amount of traffic was once again visible for their commute home from the office… This is the traffic the French couple was hoping to grab every day. What turned out was that yes, there was a tremendous about of traffic towards the end of the day, but that traffic was moving in high-speed to simply get home to family and loved ones. The location offering a convenient stop in the morning for a cup of coffee and a doughnut would not provide this same quick service for people on their way home that would have required them to sit for some time while they had their French Bistro experience. Even though many of those daily travelers would have loved the food, it was that convenience factor present in the morning that was missing, which ultimately leads to the demise of the business.

The lesson here is that it is not just the location that creates the drive of business traffic, but the type of experience the concept offers at that location that determines who patronize the establishment and how often.

Eat Well my Friends!

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23
Jan/12

Selecting a Restaurant Location I

by under General Kitchen Design, Selecting a Location

Selecting a location for your new restaurant is one of the most daunting tasks, I think, a restaurant owner can face in starting a business. You can always get new table cloths, paint the walls a different color, hire a new manager, or even take an unpopular dish off the menu; based on the response and feedback you get from your customers… But when it comes to the physical location of your establishment; this is a decision that you are stuck with, at least for a decent amount of time anyway, so it is very important to look at several factors of the space as it relates specifically to your business.

Please indulge me a short story… There was a wonderful location on the corner of 5th and 3rd streets and for 20 years was the home of a very successful doughnut shop. But alas the owner retired and decided to sell his highly visible location. A few months later it was purchased by a couple from France and based on the visibility of the location, they decided to develop a high-end, white table-cloth bistro/café in its place, based mainly on visibility this is a great location. Unfortunately, 6 months down the line, they closed their doors due to lack of customers. It wasn’t because the food was terrible, it was quite amazing in fact, and it was in my opinion, simply the concept they decided to install in this location….

Going back to my wonderful Russian friends in the earlier post… During our first Skype call, we were discussing their needs as it relates to a desired location. The first point they raised was the aspect of the rent or lease price they would need to pay as a driving factor in site selection. This is of course an important item to consider when selecting a site, but my counsel to them was a bit more all-encompassing… I wanted them to look at the bigger picture, their needs as a business as a whole first, then we can break down and look at each individual part and evaluate it accordingly. The idea being that once we look at all the different aspects of a location we want, we can bring it all together as a package that allows us to quickly and efficiently qualify or disqualify properties as they come our way to review… Perhaps it is just the chef in me that requires this type of efficiency, regardless of the task, but nevertheless I think is an excellent way to make determinations on what is best for the individual business, while at the same time expediting the review process so no time is wasted on properties that don’t meet the their needs.

As any of my current or former clients will tell you, the first thing I always ask for is the menu… The menu drives the design format, the menu drives the layout flow and the menu drives the cooking methods, but for me, we can take a step back with site selection and simply look at the concept. What kind of restaurant am I opening and where do I want to open it? Italian, French, Chinese, Pizza, Gastro-Pub, Michelin Star quality… It is the concept here that I start with. Once I know the concept I wish to implement, I now need to figure out where that concept will be best received.

In my opinion there are no exceptions to this part of site selection… Sure, depending on the type of restaurant you are opening, the criteria for location are different but ultimately, if you land your restaurant in an area that doesn’t want or need it, your odds for success are dramatically diminished.

Next we’ll take a look at a few examples of concepts and how I would decide where I would locate them based strictly on their business concept.

Eat Well my Friends!

V

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16
Jan/12

Selecting a Restaurant Location

by under Selecting a Location

My apologies for the hiatus in posting but the New Year always seems to bring a flurry of new business for some reason…

To expand on this, one of our new clients interesting enough has contacted us from Russia to aid them in obtaining and developing a restaurant space for them in New York City. This is of course a blog about hotel and restaurant kitchen design, but more and more we are being approached by clients to provide services far outside the confines of the kitchen walls so I thought I may as well share them with you here.

As any chef will tell you, learning on the job or being “thrown to the wolves” is standard practice in a professional kitchen… And not to be underestimated, a firm specializing in restaurant kitchen design and layout development seems to follow that same model. That is, with much less screaming and shouting of course…

Acquiring a location for a restaurant is a far more in-depth process than one typically realizes until you actually go through the process, myself included. There are books and websites abound that specifically address the aspect of “Selecting a Location for a Restaurant” and as with cooking, everyone has their own opinion about what’s important in selecting a space, so I thought this would be as good a medium as any to share my thoughts on this aspect of business development based on my experience and operators perspective. As most of you know, I never claim to be an expert in any field, though I do like to think that I know more than many, I think what makes my firm different is not that we think we know everything, but like a chef in the kitchen developing anew recipe or technique, we have the ability to learn and adapt to the needs of our clients that is somewhat specific to the mind of a chef… Certainly there are many industries out there that require the skills to adapt to changing situations, but I think that these skills gifted specifically to a chef to adapt his or her art and science simultaneously is a very unique skill set that provides great benefits to not just run a kitchen, but also provides a platform for a design and development firm to offer services that far exceed their traditional role.

To this extent and to the address the very complex development process of selecting a site for a restaurant, I will be dedicating several posts to this topic over the coming weeks by offering you my thoughts and perspective on exactly how I would approach it with my money. In the end, I think that is really what every client wants to know… “If it was your money, how would you approach developing a restaurant concept?” Not to mention I think we owe it to our clients to treat their hard-earned money as if it were our own.

This again is a very challenging topic to discuss on a blog particularly since everyone in the industry believes different aspects of a property are most important in the selection process; so I invite anyone and everyone to comment on this and the upcoming posts. Site selection can be a very intimidating endeavor so I think the readers of this blog would greatly benefit from everyone’s experience and point of view on the topic so they can take away what is most important to them in achieving the success they search for.

I wish you all a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year!

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19
Dec/11

Restaurant & Hotel Kitchen Design Part Approach V ~ Codes 3 of 3

by under General Kitchen Design, Plumbing

Last but certainly not least… Let’s take a look at the Plumbing and Sewer Codes.

As for Plumbing Codes, the main differences per project relate to what we refer to as the “Sanitary Sewer Code.” The concern for some cities is that their sewer lines are so old; they try to eliminate any unnecessary organic matter from entering the system which would further speed the deterioration of the sewer walls. Unfortunately this is one issue that we cannot offer consultation on until we start a project and find out what we are dealing with… For example, we developed a small café project in North Wales, PA who was only required to install a small grease interceptor at the 3 compartment sink and dishwasher for only a few hundred dollars. Conversely, we developed a small juice bar (no cooking at all!) for a health club in Severna Park, MD… The township actually required them to install a full-sized underground grease trap outside the building and cost the owner $6,000. Fortunately for him, he was well capitalized and based on his membership size and our ROI projections; he was able to recoup his investment within a year.

The moral of all these posts about codes are to hopefully bring to light and belay the concerns of potential restaurateurs and hoteliers. All of these codes do need to be addressed through the course of the restaurant kitchen design for any project, but as you interview design firms to be a part of your team, you should ask up front what assistance the firm will offer your project to ensure these codes are met up front, to prevent any delay in the project… As anyone who has gone through this process will tell you, making sure you get it right BEFORE you start construction will not only easily pay for any cost associated with hiring a skilled designer to begin with, but will prevent (more) sleepless nights by helping to make sure you open on time and within budget.

Eat well my friends, have a fantastic holiday and I wish you all a very prosperous New Year!

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