Convenience Store Kitchen & Food Service Build-Out

Food service is where convenience stores make their margin, and it is where store designs most often go wrong. A kitchen is not a piece of equipment you add to a corner. It brings ventilation, plumbing, grease handling, refrigeration, electrical load and a queue of customers who all need space. Get the kitchen placement right and the rest of the store falls into place. Get it wrong and every other zone has to work around it.

Start with the menu, not the floor plan

What you plan to serve decides what you need to build. A grab-and-go program with a roller grill and a hot case is a very different build from a full kitchen with fryers and a pizza oven.

Our hot food program setup and grab-and-go guides explain each program in detail.

How we design the kitchen

We place the hood line where the exhaust can leave the building, the sinks where the plumbing can reach them, and the walk-in freezer where it can be loaded from the back. Then we put the serving line where customers can see and reach it without blocking the main aisle. The kitchen takes the spot the building allows; the retail floor is arranged around it.

Every drawing in the package agrees with the equipment schedule. The electrical layout shows the power each piece of equipment needs. The refrigeration design covers the walk-in coolers and freezers. And the cabinets and counters on the serving line, including cup, condiment and waste stations, are drawn to fit.

Refrigeration for food service

Food service adds a walk-in freezer and more reach-in refrigeration to almost every store. We design walk-in coolers and freezers with refrigeration calculations and power requirements, and we install the equipment lines we carry, including Heatcraft and Russell refrigeration. Sizing the walk-in for the menu you plan to run in three years is cheaper than adding a second box later.

Adding food service to an existing store

Most food-service projects we see are additions to stores that already trade. The constraint is the building: where the roof can take a hood penetration, where the floor can be opened for drains, and how much electrical capacity is left. We start by measuring what is there. Then we redraw the store around a kitchen the building can actually support. Read more on convenience store remodeling.

Our work

Our project pages include Stone Creek Kitchen in Sulphur, Oklahoma, a build-out with commercial kitchen equipment and food-service refrigeration installed by JayComp. ASAP Energy in Weatherford, Oklahoma has hot food and coffee islands placed to draw customers to the center of the store. See both on the projects page.

Send us your menu plan, the store's size or floor plan, and whether it is a new build or an existing store. We will tell you what the kitchen needs and what a design package would cover.