Why do restaurants have open kitchens?

1. Cooking is cool

There are currently over 400 hours of cookery shows on UK TV networks every week, with shows likeThe Great British Bake Off attracting millions of viewers and becoming social phenomena. In other words, people love watching cooking. As such, your chefs are not only the key to selling a winning product, but can also sell a wildly popular viewing experience.

Using an open kitchen to deliver visual entertainment not only means diners will enjoy your restaurant, but also spend more time there. Longer stays can equal longer spends, meaning there is a direct link between open kitchens and increased profitability. Is it time to take down that wall?

2. Delicious viewing

It’s natural not to enjoy having everything we do at work viewed and analysed, meaning that kitchen staff could understandably resent the additional scrutiny of working in an open kitchen. In fact, according to Harvard Business Professor Ryan Buell, working in an open environment ‘meaningfully alters the way the chef experiences their job’. That said, as a result, they cook tastier food.

Eliminating waiting staff as the go-between between your kitchen and diners makes producing sub-standard food a much more embarrassing and intimate experience for kitchen staff, with a recent study finding that as a result, chefs produce notably higher quality meals. With this in mind, your restaurant’s open kitchen could transform diners’ eating experience too!

3. Seeing is trusting

Transparency is a key concept which is revolutionising businesses in many sectors around the world. Consumers are infinitely less trusting than they used to be, with scandals ranging from horse-meatballs to the banking scandal making consumers mistrustful of anything which occurs ‘behind closed doors’. As such, customers require ‘eating transparency’: reassurances before and during their dining experience that ‘what they see is what they get’.

TIP: It's important your open kitchen looks attractive and hygienic, so why not check out commercial kitchen furniture to ensure your kitchen looks its best.

It’s a phenomena that now dominates the process of opening a restaurant and, perhaps, partially explains TripAdvisor’s explosion into a meal-planning essential. Equally, open kitchens give diners transparency over the freshness and wholesomeness of the ingredients, as well as the hygiene and expertise of staff in a restaurant which clearly has nothing to hide. Of course, this means that any mistakes or mishaps are also immediately apparent to diners and begs the question, are you sure you have nothing to hide from your customers?

4. The hunger factor

American restaurant chain Chipotle certainly doesn’t hide much, as they were pioneers of the fast-casual dining boom in the USA over the past decade, showcasing how successful open kitchens can be. Founder Steve Ells had one key idea when starting a restaurant:

“The sounds, the smells, and the sights of cooking can really help you work up an appetite.”

It’s the same reason that supermarkets have gradually moved their bakery ovens further in-store and that you find walking past that chip shop quite such a tricky prospect: smelling food cooking increases our sense of hunger. By having your kitchen open, you therefore increase your customers' sense of hunger, which in itself will result in tangibly larger orders.

5. Space savers

Finally, it’s not just the sensory or financial benefits that have made an open kitchen the number one priority in many a restaurant start-up. With property increasingly costly to purchase, rent, maintain and power, the average size of an eatery is shrinking rapidly and there’s increasing strain on making the best use of floor space.

It’s precisely this phenomenon that gave birth to open kitchens in New York in the 1950s. These spaces eliminate the need for a wasted space between kitchens and dining spaces, eliminate the costs of lighting a separate room and compliment the open-plan living that has come to define modern living.

So, is ‘going open’ right for you?

Sadly, open kitchens aren’t for everyone and it’s important to be realistic about whether having an open plan setting would suit your restaurant. For starters, greater exposure to customers places greater pressure on staff’s appearance and conduct, which may not suit your people. It’s also worth asking whether it’s fair or realistic to expect kitchen staff to represent your restaurant’s brand and values in the same way as waiting staff whilst still having to cook.

What’s more, some food outlets may not be suited to the open kitchen model. Diners in some fast food chains, for example, are subconsciously aware that much of their food will be frozen and mass produced. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they want to witness employees unpackaging sacks full of hundreds of nuggets before pitching them into a fryer, despite actually knowing that this was precisely what was happening. You therefore need to be sure that witnessing your ingredients and processes, as well as meeting your staff, will inspire diners and not deter them.

TIP: Diners want to see an organised, calm and professional kitchen, so ensure your Mise en Place is good to go!

Ultimately, there are many reasons that open kitchens are proving popular with everyone from artisan pizzerias to Subway outlets. Given the positive links to customer experience and profitability, ‘going open’ should clearly be the first choice in most refurbishments or when starting a restaurant. That said, however, completely exposing yourself to customer scrutiny can be a brave or even foolhardy move and the only person who knows if it’s right for your restaurant is you.