When volume warrants it, dual cooklines can enhance efficiency and speed of service.

In the kitchen at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, the dual cookline is parallel, with a separate fry station. Photo courtesy of YoungCarusoFor high-volume foodservice operations, certain scenarios call for incorporating a second cookline. Take, for example, operations with high-volume off-premises business that includes not just delivery and takeout but also catering. This represents one example where having a second cookline could prove beneficial.

“This provides restaurants with more capacity and the ability to serve different types of customers, such as on- and off-premises,” says Juan Pablo “JP” Lopez, vice president of consulting at Miami-based Profitality Labor Guru. 

Adding a second cookline to separate production of off- and on-premises orders, which tend to have varying timelines, can increase overall efficiency. “Operators that track or measure speed of service who find it is compromised can incorporate a second line to handle the larger volume and reduce bottlenecks,” Lopez says.

Other factors beyond the need to balance on-premises and off-premises business may indicate the need for a second cookline. “Two separate restaurants in a hotel may not have room for two independent, complete kitchens,” says John Egnor, managing partner, JME Design, Columbus, Ohio. “The operations can share everything, such as refrigeration and warewashing, except the actual a la carte kitchen.”

Space and Placement

Logistics will dictate the location of the second cookline. “If the restaurant is already built and a second cookline is needed, there may not be many options for optimum efficiency,” Lopez says. “That’s why it’s good to have space allocated in the initial design for future development.”

Accessibility is also imperative. In terms of the design, Lopez says, “it’s like a puzzle to make sure all the pieces work together. Not all equipment will need to be duplicated to take care of the bottlenecks.” In an ideal scenario, dual cooklines operate in close proximity to one another, which allows both lines to share supporting equipment like refrigeration. “This way, it’s less expensive because the station is sharing equipment,” Lopez says.

Placing the two lines close together can also help make more efficient use of labor. “Operators can just deploy another staff member on the other line as needed,” Lopez explains. “In some cases, a dual cookline may require more labor, but this should result in more sales with higher throughput capacity. More often, labor can be rearranged so someone handling prep can shift to the second cookline for an hour or less and shift back.” 

Depending on the application, the secondary cookline may be smaller and activated only as necessary during busy periods. This is where flow becomes a bigger factor in determining placement, equipment and more. “In addition to looking at all equipment adjacencies, the design should take into account where both lines start and finish to identify the best spots for each piece of equipment,” Lopez says.

Back-to-back cooklines with a Utility Distribution System facilitate easy access for staff at the Colorado Convention Center.

Fulfilling Menu Requirements

When two or more concepts utilize the same cookline, such as with a ghost kitchen, capitalizing on available space and efficient equipment use should be the design goal. “If a commissary or ghost kitchen is owned by a franchisee with three different restaurant concepts, like sandwich, pizza and chicken wings, that kitchen has to support all three menus,” notes Marcin Zmiejko, associate principal, YoungCaruso, Denver. “This is also true in a food court, where a kitchen is shared by multiple brands.”

A variety of factors can impact the design of dual cooklines. “If a kitchen is accommodating two high-end white tablecloth a la carte restaurants, there may be more complexity in the dual cookline design,” Egnor notes. For example, accommodating two different menus may require the cookline to duplicate certain pieces of equipment, which could result in a longer line rather than two separate lines to save space. When the concepts and/or menus differ, both cooklines may not be fully functioning at the same times throughout the day. “With a sports bar and a signature restaurant in a hotel, the volume will vary depending on the dayparts,” Egnor says. While the main restaurant may support breakfast, lunch and dinner with less volume discrepancies, the sports bar may see high volume with lunch and/or dinner business, which would necessitate a second cookline.

A current JME Design hotel project includes a 300-seat restaurant and a 450-seat sports bar with a dual cookline. “It’s an L-shaped line, which is all hot on one side; where the L comes together is where the cold and pizza lines are,” Egnor says. “Another dual line design I’ve used a lot in healthcare has identical cooklines running side by side at 100% to expedite speed of service.”

In addition, the L-shaped design provides versatility to ramp labor up or down as necessary. “With dual cooklines, more labor efficiencies need to be built in with cross-training and staff reallocation,” Egnor adds.

If two restaurants with one kitchen are both heavy on saute and light on fried food, there may be two saute lines with one fryer that supports both lines. “With our San Diego hotel project, one side of the dual cookline is 60 feet long, while the other is 40 feet,” Egnor notes. “Not all equipment is duplicated.”

Mellow Mushroom repurposed its kitchen space to include a secondary pizza cookline, which cut make time during high-volume periods.

Suites vs. Straight Lines

Dual cooklines designed in cooking suites with an island configuration represent another option operators can consider. This format features four sides with equipment that may or may not be duplicated. “This design can accommodate two to four chefs working at the same time on different components,” Zmiejko explains. “While one person is sauteing, another can be frying and a third cook can be charbroiling.”

Like with separate cooklines, suites with dual lines can be multifunctional. Operators can designate one area for bulk cooking to prepare items in advance using such equipment as convection ovens, while another area can include charbroilers, woks and other finishing equipment.

“If the menu is small and volume is high, both cooklines would typically have the same design with identical equipment,” Zmiejko says. “But in a suite configuration, equipment like flattops can be accessible from either side for two people to work on at one time.”

The exception would be equipment with one user access point, such as combi ovens, steamers and kettles. “Menus with unorthodox cooking methods can also impact the design,” Zmiejko notes. For example, prime rib can be started in a slow cooker and finished off in a wok with other items.

Instead of planning for equipment redundancy for the same menu items, suites can have separate workstations that are independent but use the same types of equipment. “In this case, equipment has to be positioned so it’s ergonomically correct for staff,” Zmiejko says.

Like a traditional single station, all dual cookline designs should limit steps for assembling menu items and enhance equipment accessibility. With dual cooklines, Zmiejko recommends incorporating a UDS (Utility Distribution System), centralized infrastructure designed to efficiently distribute essential utilities such as electricity, gas, water and steam to various equipment and appliances. “This allows operators to change components and shift them as needed if the operation changes,” he says. “Flexibility is a big plus.”

After researching various options, Mellow Mushroom updated its back of the house to include an additional cooklines to grow their top line sales.

Pizza Chain Ramps Up With Additional Cookline 

Mellow Mushroom, an Atlanta-based pizza chain with 165 locations in 16 states, is revamping its back of the house to include an additional cookline. “Over the last five years, there has been a substantial shift in the industry due to labor and how guests consume our product,” says Ahsan Jiva, executive vice president, strategy and transformation, Mellow Mushroom. “We were seeing more bottlenecks, so when it comes to executing product times, there was opportunity.”

Prior to the pandemic, the majority of Mellow Mushroom’s business was on-premises. “It was easier to manage two channels since third-party delivery and digital sales weren’t big,” Jiva says. “Now, digital has grown 400%; this has added strain on managing capacity.”

After conducting research and seeing others in the industry creating dual cooklines to handle digital and third-party delivery orders, Jiva and his team realized this was necessary for Mellow Mushroom’s franchisees to grow their top line sales. “We had to get food out faster without straining our equipment capacity,” he says.

Mellow Mushroom first attempted to speed production by switching from traditional deck ovens to granite stone impingement conveyor ovens. “In addition to cook times going down to seven minutes, we also have more product consistency with these new ovens,” Jiva says. While impactful, that solution did not resolve all of the chain’s challenges. “With expanded off-premises business, we needed a way to split production,” he notes.

In researching its options, Mellow Mushroom commissioned a time and motion study. This helped determine the cookline’s amount of idle and working time during peak hours and gauge guest wait times. The results were impactful. “We spent time in stores, talking to operators and team members, figuring out the kitchen layout,” Jiva says. “We discovered we had the right type of equipment, but the layout wasn’t ideal.”

Mellow Mushroom’s team also discovered paring down the menu to focus on bestsellers, as well as adding a secondary cookline, would push items through faster. “With the time and motion study, we tracked all menu items to see how long they took from morning to close and identified the bottlenecks,” Jiva says. “We figured out how much volume we were pushing through with the current lines and how ticket touch times would be reduced by adding a secondary cookline.” 

Mellow Mushroom prides itself on being the “unchained chain.” As such, sites are not uniform. Although the equipment is the same, the kitchen layouts can differ, Jiva says. In new builds, back-of-house space has been reallocated to accommodate the second cookline.

“Rather than adding square footage, we’re repurposing space for a secondary pizza cookline,” Jiva says. “We anticipate cutting make time 30% to 40% at peak times with a secondary pizza cookline dedicated to digital orders. We want to prove out the business case that this change will drive top line growth with greater capacity and improved speed of service. Once piloted, we will roll it out to early adopters, followed by the rest of the system.”

At the end of 2024, Mellow Mushroom was implementing its first prototype location to see how many of its current kitchens could be retrofitted with remodels, equipment changes and menu refreshes.