Commercial kitchen design and equipment specification, Australia-wide

Industry Kitchens quotes design as a fixed fee against defined stages, not as a percentage of your equipment spend — so the fee does not rise every time the specification does. The fee depends on floor area, the number of separate spaces, how much of the optional scope you need, and whether council documentation or travel is involved, so it is scoped per project rather than published as a rate card.

Concept design and equipment specification are quoted together as the first stage. Construction documentation is the second. Interior design, council approvals and hydraulic design are separate optional stages, quoted only if you want them. Fees exclude GST and do not include local authority fees and charges.

Send a dimensioned floor plan and a short brief and you will have the stages, the deliverables and the fee in writing within one business day.

Typically 3–6 weeks from a complete brief to an issued layout and equipment schedule. Projects needing site attendance, council documentation or coordination with other consultants take longer. Equipment lead times run separately and are often the longer pole — some imported items are quoted in months, not weeks, which is why the schedule is issued before procurement starts.

Assembly line, island, zone, galley, open or display, ghost or delivery-only, food production, central kitchen with satellites, and cafeteria. Assembly line suits a narrow menu at high repetition; island suits larger floor areas where supervision matters; zone suits broad menus and larger brigades; galley suits long narrow tenancies; open kitchens are visible to guests and drive finish and ventilation decisions; ghost kitchens are organised around order throughput rather than plating; food production kitchens are zoned for HACCP, with one-way flow from receival to dispatch and a controlled crossing between the raw and ready-to-eat sides; a central kitchen with satellites feeds multiple serveries — hospital floors or function rooms — from one production kitchen, with heated carts as the link; and cafeteria kitchens pair a back-of-house cook line with a self-service counter run ending at a till.

As a planning rule of thumb, commercial kitchens commonly occupy around 25–40% of a venue's total floor area. The real figure varies enormously with menu complexity, how much preparation is done on site, storage strategy and service model — a bakery producing from raw ingredients needs a very different ratio to a bar reheating a short menu. The layout exercise establishes the actual number for your project.

Before the lease is signed, wherever possible. An early review identifies access, power, gas, drainage, ventilation and equipment-footprint risks while they can still be solved cheaply. The most expensive projects are the ones where the tenancy was committed to first and the kitchen had to be forced into it afterwards.

Yes. A pre-lease review assesses whether the footprint, access and known services suit the proposed menu and production model. It does not replace legal, planning, building or engineering due diligence, and it is not a compliance certification.

The agreed scope can include schematic layouts, equipment schedules and technical information that support council or consultant documentation. Submission requirements vary by council, and final lodgement or certification may need to be completed by you or your appointed consultants.

Yes, and it's the fastest starting point. Provide the latest dimensioned plan plus reflected ceiling or services information where available, along with the menu, expected covers and project programme.

Projects are modelled in three dimensions rather than flat-drawn. Larger and more complex kitchens are built in Revit, where the equipment schedule, elevations and service points stay linked to the model through every revision. Smaller or simpler projects are modelled in SketchUp, which puts a 3D view in front of you sooner without the extra overhead. The tool is chosen to suit the project rather than applied by default. Drawing sets are issued as PDF for distribution to your builder and trades; if your architect or engineer needs native model or CAD files, ask at the scoping stage and we will set that up in the agreement.

Yes — this is the main structural difference between Industry Kitchens and a design-only consultancy. The layout and equipment schedule flow directly into project pricing, procurement, freight, installation coordination and after-sales support, with no second specification exercise and no gap between the designer and the supplier.

No. The design fee covers the design and documentation service and is payable in full for that service, whether or not you order equipment through Industry Kitchens. It is not offset, credited or refunded against an equipment purchase. What that buys you is independence: because the fee does not depend on the order, there is no incentive to specify a larger or more expensive kitchen than the brief needs, and no reason for the fee to move when the specification does. You are under no obligation to buy — on payment of the relevant stage the documents are yours to issue to any supplier for pricing.

It's a fair question, and design-only consultancies raise it. Our answer is structural rather than a promise. Design fees are charged independently of any equipment supply, and clients are under no obligation to purchase equipment through Industry Kitchens — the schedule is yours to take to any supplier, and the fee stands either way. Every schedule carries alternates at different price points and energy profiles. What you get from one team is that nothing is specified which cannot actually be sourced, freighted, installed or serviced in Australia, which is the usual failure mode when the designer and the supplier have never spoken to each other.

Yes. Industry Kitchens designs and supplies commercial kitchens across every Australian state and territory from its Melbourne base. A site measure and design brief meeting is included in the concept stage. For interstate and regional projects, travel is quoted separately at the time of proposal.

Site address, the latest floor plan, your menu or production brief, expected covers at peak, service style, target opening date, budget range, and any existing electrical, gas, hydraulic or exhaust information. The floor plan matters most — everything else can be worked out in conversation.

If you're replacing equipment like-for-like in a working kitchen where the layout and services aren't changing, your builder and regular trades can usually manage it — send us the list and we'll quote the equipment with no design fee. Engage a designer when it's a new tenancy or change of use, when the menu is changing significantly, when gas, power, drainage or exhaust are moving, when council approval is required, or when the format is being rolled out across multiple sites.