Opening a commercial kitchen: the six-week timeline

Openings rarely run late because of the cooking equipment. They run late because of the order things were done in.

This is the sequence that works, counting backwards from the day you want to serve food.

Six weeks out — sign off the layout, order the long-lead items

Nothing else can start until the layout is final, because the layout determines the services, and the services take the longest to change.

At this point you should have: an equipment schedule, a drawing showing where each item sits, and a list of what has a long lead time. Anything imported, anything custom-fabricated (stainless tables, canopies, cold rooms) and anything in an unusual size goes on order now.

Stocked items can wait. That is the point of buying from someone who holds stock.

Four weeks out — confirm the services on site

Not on the drawing. On site, with the electrician and the plumber standing in the room.

• Electrical points in the right positions, with the right supply and enough capacity.
• Gas points, certified, with the correct sizes.
• Water and drainage where the dishwasher and the ice machine actually go.
• Extraction ducting run and make-up air resolved.

Every week of slippage from here traces back to something in this list not being checked in person.

Two weeks out — book the delivery window and check access

This is the step everyone skips, and it is the one that produces the photograph of a combi oven that does not fit through the door.

Measure the route, not the room: door widths, corner radii, lift dimensions and weight limits, stairs, ramps, and where a truck can legally stand. Confirm who will be on site to receive, and whether the floor is finished — heavy equipment on an unfinished screed is a problem for both of you.

Book the delivery window against the site's actual readiness, not its optimistic readiness.

One week out — install, commission, train

Install and commissioning are two different things, and the second one is the one that matters.

Installation is positioning, connecting and levelling. Commissioning is proving it works: gas pressures set, electrical checked, refrigeration pulled down and holding, controls programmed, and the machine run under something like real conditions.

Then train the people who will actually use it, on the equipment as installed. Not the sales demonstration — the machine in its final position, with its real settings.

Opening week — a snag list, not surprises

If the previous four steps happened, opening week produces a snag list: small adjustments, a shelf in the wrong place, a programme to tweak. That is normal and healthy.

What it should not produce is a discovery. Every discovery in opening week traces back to a step above that was compressed.

Where it usually slips

In our experience, three places:

1. Layout sign-off drags, and the long-lead order goes in two weeks late. Everything downstream moves with it.
2. Services are confirmed on a drawing rather than on site, and the discrepancy surfaces on installation day.
3. Access is never checked, and the delivery has to go back.

None of those are equipment problems. All of them are sequence problems.

Start earlier than you think

If you are opening in eight weeks, you are on schedule. If you are opening in four, tell your supplier that today — it changes what we specify, because stocked equipment that is here beats perfect equipment that is on a boat.

[Send us the project](/quote/submit) and we will quote it against your actual date.