Kitchen Temp Issue Heats Up for Restaurants

More operators are taking action to keep kitchens cool and reduce employee turnover, advise restaurant industry veterans from HFA Architecture + Engineering

BENTONVILLE, Ark., April 16, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Controlling kitchen temperatures is becoming a hotter issue for some U.S. restaurant leaders, advised two industry veterans from HFA Architecture + Engineering.

And that is because high construction costs and today's scarcity of available real estate are causing more restaurants to move into nontraditional spaces like former retail boxes, where HVAC issues can be more challenging, write HFA's Brent Tweedy and Brad Martsching in a new Speakerbox column for Nation's Restaurant News.

It is a potential problem because the discomfort created by improperly conditioned kitchens can eventually lead to "higher turnover among line cooks, not to mention bigger energy bills," they note in the piece.

Tweedy is an HFA Vice President in charge of engineering services supporting restaurant clients. Martsching leads the restaurant group's mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) design team, spearheading engineering services for multiple QSRs.

In the April 9 column, Tweedy and Martsching offer advice on how restaurant leaders can work with their architecture and engineering partners to maintain kitchen comfort.

They kick off the piece by explaining that engineers overseeing a restaurant's HVAC design need to be able to dial in the HVAC system for positive building pressure. In other words, the air on the inside of the space must be able to transfer to the outside through openings in the building.

"The air exhausted by hoods must be made up for (per code requirement) with replacement air brought in from outside," the authors note. "But exactly how to go about conditioning that replacement air is an important design decision. Handle it improperly — or not at all — and the restaurant will become an energy hog that is exceedingly difficult to cool."

The net effect is a bit like cranking your home's AC while keeping all the doors and windows wide open.

Cognizant of such issues, which can be especially challenging if multiple exhaust hoods are called for in the design, two national chicken chains have tasked their AE teams with finding opportunities to replace rooftop units with Dedicated Outdoor Air Systems (DOAS). These systems allow restaurants to maintain positive pressure as well as condition outside air as it is being pulled into the building.

"Another fast-expanding ghost kitchen, having prioritized the comfort of its line cooks, is systematically reviewing its portfolio to better understand how its kitchens are functioning," write Tweedy and Martsching. "The goal is to create criteria for avoiding discomfort and other issues in the future."

At some nontraditional spaces, it might be necessary to find workarounds to more traditional HVAC systems. "One fine-dining concept in Houston needed to ventilate five exhaust hoods in a single ground-floor kitchen," they write. "Fortunately, the multistory building had rooftop chases that made this possible, though it was a tight squeeze."

Another restaurant lessee in a multistory building discovered too late that all the chases to the roof had been taken by other food-and-beverage concepts.

"It had to find an efficient way to both exhaust the hood and bring in make-up air from outside," the authors note. "The solution was to use self-scrubbers to filter and exhaust the air, smells and grease from the exhaust hood out onto the street at a height of about 11 feet."

In the piece's conclusion, Tweedy and Martsching note that, in a worst-case scenario, a hot kitchen could have cascading negative effects for the operator. "Higher turnover caused in part by uncomfortable conditions on the hot line can translate into problematically short-staffed restaurants," they write. "This, in turn, can contribute to longer wait times, more fumbled orders, shorter tempers, and a general degradation in the guest experience."

Restaurant leaders should consult with their A+E team early in the site-selection process to fully understand what will be required to achieve kitchen comfort before signing the letter-of-intent and lease and moving forward with buildout, they advise in the piece.

While it might be largely invisible to patrons and associates, the authors add, HVAC design makes a real difference in the comfort, safety and efficiency of restaurant buildings and spaces. "Give it short shrift, and your overheated kitchen staff could end up reenacting a shouting match from the Hulu TV show 'The Bear.' Dial it in, and things will hum along nicely, with nobody noticing that the thermometer always hovers at a balmy 72 degrees."

The full article is available at:
https://www.nrn.com/expert-opinions/this-kitchen-problem-could-worsen-turnover-energy-bills

Media Contacts: At Jaffe Communications, Elisa Krantz, (908) 789-0700, [email protected] 

SOURCE HFA Architecture + Engineering