Designing a foodservice operation continues to become more and more complicated.
To be effective, foodservice designers need to balance what they learned way back when with the unique challenges of the moment. From uncertain and constantly shifting economic conditions to the need to build in flexibility to address a seemingly endless list of unknown changes, foodservice designers continue to tap into their wealth of experience-based knowledge and ability to ask the right questions to develop operations that can address a growing list of complexities and withstand
the tests of time.
Meet the Consultants
Cal BrokampCal Brokamp
Project Director
ColburnGuyette Foodservice Design
Cal Brokamp brings more than 15 years of experience in foodservice operations to her work at ColburnGuyette. After earning a bachelor’s degree in management and later an MBA from Boston College, she pursued her passion for hospitality by earning a culinary arts degree and working both front- and back-of-the-house roles. Over the past decade, Brokamp held leadership roles in college and university foodservice, with a focus on culinary operations, management, and procurement at such institutions as Boston College, Harvard University, and the University of Puget Sound.
Pamela EatonPamela Eaton, FCSI, LEED AP
Project Manager/Design and Operations Consultant, Revit
NGAssociates Foodservice Consultants
Eaton has more than 20 years of experience in foodservice consulting and design, and an additional seven years of experience in hotel and restaurant food and beverage operations. As a project manager, she oversees all aspects of the foodservice facility design from programming through schematic design and creation of construction documents through construction assistance. Eaton has worked throughout the United States and internationally on a variety of projects including kitchens and serveries for corporate dining operations, higher education campuses, K-12 schools, culinary schools, hotels, and hospitals.
Orlando EspinosaOrlando Espinosa
Principal
Espinosa says he has personally completed more than 1,500 projects. He has led prestigious projects including: design, construction administration oversight, fit out, commissioning and startup of five summer Olympic Athletes’ Village foodservice operations; offshore oil platform foodservice operations in the Persian Gulf; and, the renovation of Fortune 100 corporate foodservice operations nationally and internationally. Prior to founding OEA, Orlando’s career included leadership at Aramark as vice president of design.
Thinking back to when you first started in the foodservice industry, in what ways have you seen it evolve for the better?
OE: The more modern capabilities today’s equipment has is one thing that stands out. A gas range is not just a gas range anymore. You have a lot of ways to tailor it to your needs. Convection ovens and combi ovens have been expanded upon, too, with features like better temperature controls.
Food safety practices is another aspect of the industry that stands out. When I got into the industry in the 1970s, food safety practices were strict but not as tight as they are now. There’s an even greater emphasis on cooking temps, holding temps and sanitation. The food safety education process has gotten so much better and more formalized. Back then much of the food safety training happened by word of mouth.
On the downside, some segments have become more transaction oriented and less hospitality oriented. You would go to a restaurant and people would greet you, talk to you and maybe even make a connection. That level of service seems to be only present in fine dining today. That said, maybe some of this will make a comeback. I recently read where Walmart is scaling back self-checkout for a variety of reasons including security and allowing its associates to make a better connection with its customers.
How has your approach to foodservice design progressed over the past couple of years?
PE: The number of factors impacting our designs are greater than ever: What range of cuisines do you anticipate offering? How many menu options do you want to offer? How often will the menu significantly change? Is the clientele fixed (corporate cafe) or variable (retail)? How many points of service are necessary? Do you want to offer a self-serve option? How is staffing in the area? What can equipment do to potentially offset undereducated/less experienced staff? Then there’s the difference by geography. LA is different from San Francisco which is different from New York City. Sometimes you can be on the cutting edge and sometimes not. The list of questions to ask has grown long.
How do you get the answers to all those questions?
PE: A lot of times you don’t get to those answers. You have to use your best judgment. Starting with a clean slate helps. While there’s certainly some carryover from one project to the next, each one is unique in its own right. If there’s an operator or a chef on board, you can get to those answers pretty quickly. And if there’s a relationship with that operator or chef, you will have a better idea of how receptive they will be to new ideas as well as expectations about how things will be done. In some cases, they already know they want the typical offerings, like deli, salad and burger stations, and they won’t be open to entertaining something like a Thai offering. In other instances, they will be up for trying something new. You just have to draw out the information you can from the people you have been given access to.
What role is AI and/or other emerging technologies playing in your work?
CB: I am using AI a lot and am trying to be an avid learner to stay on top of things to find efficiencies in my job, my team’s job and for my clients. We’ve had some chefs play around with image generators to communicate what they want in a design. It sometimes comes up with things that we don’t think can be built, but we love the challenge. For example, if one wanted to build a coffee counter with a fully refrigerated drawer that slides out. We’re not sure we can make this happen. The bigger picture, though, shows that chefs are innately creative humans and using technologies like AI allows them to communicate their ideas, which is really exciting. Having the ability to see those pictures gives us a better chance of replicating the ideas.
I also see an opportunity where AI can handle all the detailed and repetitive aspects of our jobs, but it’s not there yet. On a recent project I asked it to run some calculations and it got a few of them right but not all of them. When it goes out there to gather information it does not know what it’s getting or where it gets it from.
Thus far, there’s been a lot of economic uncertainty in 2025 that potentially impacts project costs, equipment and more. How are you working with your project teams to navigate these choppy waters?
OE: First thing I do when I meet with a client is to understand what they want to do. Have you come up with a menu? Who is your audience? Do you want to benchmark against anyone? The answers to those questions will help us understand what issues they have to address. Then we can get into the footprint of the operation and more. On any project I track every cost and I can provide them with guidelines and information along the way that educates them on what to do next. If they want to know the cost per square foot, I can provide an estimate because of my experience and tracking that data across other projects. This a fundamental approach that works in good times and can help you weather uncertainty.
When working with clients, what are a few changes you have noticed?
CB: Timeline is one area that’s changed. We are currently in a cycle of fast, small projects. From a design perspective and programming part, I try to have as many conversations as possible in the beginning. In the past we used to be able to have multiple conversations throughout the project and even change whole designs if the need arose. Now given the nature of these timelines and the need to get these projects done, we can’t do that. So we have to be even more mindful with the questions we have with ownership, management and other stakeholders. Plus, it’s important to speak the language of the operator so they understand what they are getting early on in the process. You have to be able to place operators in the center of that plan and allow them to walk around in it, so to speak. Asking them what they do first thing in the morning now, and then explaining to them how the new design will impact that is really important.
Given the rate of change in the industry has never been faster, what steps do you take to make sure a design is flexible enough to remain relevant moving forward?
OE: When I first got into the industry, we were designing facilities that we thought would be there 15 or 20 years. These were battleship quality facilities, so to speak. But as you progressed into the ’80s and ’90s, the expectation in corporate dining, for example, became people wanted to get food similar to what they were able to get outside of the workplace, think food courts or other restaurants. A lot of this was brought about by growth among the contract foodservice operators, who were trying to give their clients new experiences. Now designs are meant to last five years or so, which coincides with the length of the typical agreement between a contract feeder and their customer.
We design stations with flexibility that will change with menu cycle or daypart. We can change the signage, graphics and colors to make it look different. From an equipment perspective, now you have food wells that can switch between hot and cold. You have combi ovens that can cook a variety of things. The advent of ventless equipment has helped here, too. You can move around a lot of that equipment without having to do major construction, which was not the case years ago.
Plus, the technology being used also helps you make better use of labor by presetting menus, cooking instructions, etc. It allows you to weather a changeover of employees.
Off-premises consumption of foodservice-prepared meals has never been higher, yet some people still crave an in-person dining experience. How do you balance both?
PE: It’s difficult because the footprint of foodservice facilities continues to shrink as facility costs increase. Best practice is to have separate assembly, holding and pickup areas if possible. You don’t want to inconvenience your customers in the restaurant with lines of delivery drivers waiting to pick up orders. Similar with the parking or entrance area, you want to have ways for the drivers to be in and out quickly without negatively affecting on-site diners. There’s no one-size-fits-all for this. I look at this through the third-party delivery lens versus a customer showing up to pick up their pizza. Now the high-end restaurants are offering their meals delivered to your home. So, you have multiple entities coming in to get food. What do you do when someone gets a more complex meal? How do you make sure the quality of the food, at least until it walks out your door, is the best it can be? If you are using lockers, where do you put them so they don’t take over the whole space? Does your facility even allow for separate entrances?
Describe a future-forward dining operation. What traits or attributes does it have?
CB: Efficiency. They are unbelievably efficient in what people do in that space as well as the equipment they use. The equipment also needs to wear multiple hats. Future flexibility is what drives my designs. Say we have a self-serve salad station or maybe a grill station. We will design it for the moment, but experience tells us that six months or six years down the road that station will change. So, it has to be flexible. A station in a college dining environment has to be able to become self-serve quickly should the need arise. It’s a constantly changing target.
Explore what it means to be flexible a bit further.
CB: The technology of the equipment has been huge. Wells that can go quickly from hot to cold or vice versa allow us to do anything at the flip of a switch is really important. Food shields that we can reposition as needed are really important and helpful, too. The equipment that’s behind that serving line is really important, too. So decide which one can do more and allow us to produce the same amount of product as well as a variety of product in a space.
Sustainability was a hot topic in foodservice for quite a while. What’s the key to successfully implementing some sustainable practices?
OE: We ask clients to identify what sustainable practices they use and then show them other opportunities to control energy costs, food waste and other areas. We have to identify what’s going to be done, how it’s going to be done and what resources are in place to make it successful. There’s education that goes with implementing sustainability practices. Then there’s the need to address local codes. One of our projects, a biodigester was installed and the municipality had them remove it, despite having approved it.
What developments in foodservice equipment have caught your eye lately? What developments would you like to see?
CB: For a few years post-pandemic it was not the most exciting time in terms of equipment development. We don’t necessarily need smarter equipment all of the time. This year I’ve been excited about some of the all-electric equipment we have seen. Chargrills were the last frontier. Many people did not think you could convert this equipment to electric, but we are starting to see some new advancements with equipment coming out soon and via some developments in Europe.
Is there a future or emerging foodservice design trend that excites you?
OE: We are doing a lot with advanced food prep, including cook-chill and sous vide. These are approaches that allow you to prep more and hold longer. That helps you better manage food costs and labor.
PE: Not necessarily design, but the increase of availability of authentic global cuisines, as well as the fusion of those cuisines into new and delicious dishes is a trend that excites me. Twenty years ago the new cool thing was stir fry. All you had to do was put in a wok. Now that we are doing work internationally, there’s a lot of new cuisines that were not part of corporate America that companies want. There’s an interest in what’s the next new cuisine. People don’t necessarily want the food to be Americanized. If it’s Thai food, for example, they want it Thai hot. There’s specific equipment that’s needed to deliver these authentic experiences and you have to be able to do it in such a way that when the facility needs to pivot in a year, it’s ready to do that. You also get to explore what cuisines mesh well and make interesting foods. You have to do all of this while creating a facility that’s compact and does not cost too much to build or run. The challenge there is a great one.
