Operators have plenty of options when it comes to running smarter.

Efficiency is a broad topic for every business. It touches labor costs, ordering, energy usage and facility design. For food-service operations, that last piece, facility design, involves creating a kitchen that runs smoothly. This task includes the obvious: developing a space where orders flow easily from one station to the next and staff don’t have to take extra steps — and extra time — to do their jobs.

That’s not the only way kitchens can be efficient, though. When designing a facility, operators should want spaces that are, in some ways, future-proofed, says Joseph Schumaker, FCSI, president and CEO of FoodSpace, Meridian, Idaho.

Future-proofing is not about knowing exactly what’s going to happen in the future, Schumaker says. Instead, he advises operators to set up their kitchens for flexibility. Extra utility outlets and hookups, for instance, can help operations evolve with the times.

For example, if paninis become a hot menu category, it becomes much easier and cheaper to add a panini press if the kitchen already has an outlet that can accommodate it. “It costs $1,500 to pull an extra outlet for a panini press [during construction], but it would cost them $10,000 to do it later, after the thing’s been open for a few years,” says Schumaker. 

Along those lines, designers should create commercial kitchens with enough extra space to accommodate new pieces of equipment. This space isn’t just for use years from now, Schumaker notes. A week into opening, an operator could decide to add a bread rack or move a toaster. Designers simply don’t know all these nuances when creating a new space, so leaving this extra room helps kitchen managers improve the operation starting from Day 1.

Designing an operation for possible changes does not stop with the kitchen, adds Schumaker. Build flexibility into the entire infrastructure of a new operation — from data to power to lighting and more — especially if the goal calls for the space lasting for more than a few years.

“Future-proofing is not necessarily about knowing all the answers of how the future’s going to be. That goes for power, that goes for data, that goes for lighting, that goes for the way that the guest is going to transact,” says Schumaker. “Thinking about Day 2 of operation and Year 5 of operation and Year 10 of operation, thinking about the things that you can potentially plan for and mitigate now, is incredibly important to the project.”

Where to Prep?

Future-proofing kitchens (and entire operations) represents one important way to stay efficient. Another — and one that is on the rise — is utilizing off-premises prep. Many operations now have more slicing and dicing take place in commissaries and by food distributors, according to Ignacio Goris, co-founder of Profitality Labor Guru, Miami. There are several factors to consider when contemplating outsourcing prep.

First, says Goris, operators should compare the cost of prepping in-house and prepping off-premises. The in-house calculation should factor in the ingredient costs as well as the time/labor costs of the work. “You can do the ROI on outsourcing,” he says. “Sometimes it’s going to be more expensive by pound if you bring it from somewhere else than if you do it in-house.”

Operators must also factor in product quality. In some cases, a product that is cheaper to outsource will be lower in quality than one prepped in-house, Goris says, while other times, an outsourced product will be more expensive but higher quality. 

One chain deploying a quality-first approach is Huey Magoo’s, a fast-casual chicken tender concept with 80-plus locations that is in the midst of fine-tuning operations for its franchise partners. According to Matt Armstrong, the chain’s co-founder and vice president of development, Huey Magoo’s “calibrates what really needs to be done in-house that franchisees can execute to maintain great quality but also have suppliers supply some of the items that help reduce labor at the stores.”

The chain’s coleslaw is an example of this balance, Armstrong says. Instead of it being delivered premade in tubs, restaurants get deliveries of shredded cabbage, which holds freshness well. When it’s time to make the slaw, team members mix the cabbage with the chain’s proprietary dressing. The approach benefits the operation by reducing in-house tasks while maintaining the quality of the products, he says.

While outsourcing prep work has been done for years, some are taking it to a new level, Goris says. Certain restaurants now rely on this off-site work enough to design smaller,
simpler kitchens. 

This approach can be of particular benefit in urban areas, where space often comes at a premium. In addition, outsourcing can help lower the overhead for individual stores by requiring less equipment. Operators, though, should consider the challenges going small could present. 

A more focused kitchen, for instance, could make it harder to evolve a menu down the road, Goris says. “Everything has to be formulated to be able to flow through the same package,” he notes. “It is limiting in some sense, but it’s making people think, ‘How can I reformulate that product so that it fits with the flow that we have designed for the concept?’”

AI and Simulations

Whether a restaurant gets designed for flexibility, simplicity or both, there are ways operators can eliminate unforeseen problems before they actually arise during the design phase.

Schumaker recommends the use of 3D design tools from the start, along with virtual reality simulations and even tools based on video-game engines to show how a space will look before it is built. Unlike kitchen designers, restaurant operators aren’t trained to translate a 2D drawing to a 3D space in their heads, he stresses. These tools help operators understand what they will actually get and pinpoint issues with the design before ordering a single piece of kitchen equipment.

Taking this one step further, some more advanced systems even allow operators and foodservice consultants to simulate the actual operation of a kitchen. The team can enter time values for each piece of equipment and the jobs it will do — three minutes for fries or five minutes for a burger, for instance. They can then just (virtually) wind it up and let it go.

These tools “actually allow you to run a video time-lapse of a service. You can see how many people fit in the space, how busy the space feels. [It produces] not only images, but these videos almost depict what the space is going to look and feel like once it’s built,” says Schumaker. This information allows operators and designers to ID bottlenecks and find ways to squeeze a bit more efficiency out of both the front and back of the house, he says.

While Goris also encourages the use of virtual tools to improve operations, he recommends using these recreations as a “digital twin” for the operation — essentially a virtual mirror of the business, including all mechanical specs and equipment. Whenever there’s a problem with any part of the operation, the operators can call on the twin to help because it models the operation, in turn enabling the operator to formulate solutions.

“You have a digital fryer, and you have your real fryer. From a data warehousing perspective, you can have everything related to the fryer maintenance and the fryer warranty on the digital asset. So instead of having to go find it in a folder, you go to the digital building,” Goris says. 

The digital recreation can simplify record keeping and make it easier for operators to share information on the entire operation.

Ordering, Scheduling and AI

Design is not the only area that can benefit from technology. Goris predicts that with AI integration, data from POS systems will soon help restaurants optimize employee scheduling. AI-enabled POS systems, he notes, are doing great work forecasting customer demand and product mix during a given period. When those systems can be combined with information regarding the amount of work involved in a specific task, scheduling should become much more efficient. 

“The forecasting is there. The actual creation of the schedule is starting to be used, but the schedules that we see out there are not incredibly smart. But with the technology that’s out there, I feel that has to be the next step,” says Goris.

Notably, using AI-enabled POS systems likely won’t be just for large chains. Many popular POS systems have built-in forecasting tools for sales and product mix. Sometime soon, a single mom-and-pop restaurant should be able to leverage this data and AI advances to improve scheduling, Goris predicts.

AI-assisted ordering is another evolving technology already in use. One company taking advantage of this is White Castle. That chain’s new “Castle of the Future” prototype deploys several technology advances, including a fry-cooking robot behind the scenes and, in a customer-facing role, AI-supported ordering in its drive-thru. 

Businesses using AI to work with customers can be a sensitive issue for both the operator and guest. White Castle has addressed this directly. The AI agent, named Julia (after a longtime White Castle employee), identifies itself as AI from the outset. This transparency can make guests more likely to trust the company. Customers can also opt out of using Julia altogether. And if a conversation with Julia requires intervention, a White Castle employee monitoring the interaction is always there to step in.

“When they’re introducing technology, they’re doing it in a way that still allows them to have control of the human element,” says Mat Gurda, a senior creative director with WD Partners, which designed the “Castle of the Future” prototype. “They want to make that experience not standoffish and more approachable for people who may be using [AI ordering] for the first time, which is quite a few.”

Find Your Focus

In a foodservice operation, efficiency can take many forms heading into 2026. 

Operators can design for future changes or run a virtual service in their kitchen before it’s actually built. They can find the right balance between cost, quality and outsourcing. And they can explore how to take advantage of new tools like AI to make their business run smarter.

Any or all of these tools can help an operation save time and money. It’s up to each operator to decide where to invest their attention and resources. 

Advice on Equipment

In addition to addressing big-picture questions around efficiency, here is some advice on how to best use specific pieces of equipment for speed, affordability and food quality.

On prep equipment

“Cutting and slicing with processors is becoming a lot easier than before and more affordable. There are also some manual cutters that people should take advantage of that can slice and dice. You could do [these jobs] with some manual tools that would improve the product and make the efficiency of that process a lot better.”

Ignacio Goris, Profitality Labor Guru

On White Castle’s fryer robot

“It doesn’t really influence the design other than the space that it needs around the fryers. A typical aisle width might be 42 inches, and the mechanics might stand out maybe 6 inches, so the space in that aisle might need to be a little bit wider. You do need to account for it a little bit.”

Rob Seely, WD Partners

“White Castle’s employee retention rates are great. Their whole focus of bringing in [the robot] was really because they knew that was a task that was the least desirable for their team members to do.”

Mat Gurda, WD Partners

On rapid-cook ovens

“Just make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. If you’re going to do baked potatoes, you can do that great in a convection oven. But for certain menu items, rapid-cook ovens can provide the speed and the quality needed … Quesadillas are a great example. They may take a while to do with other pieces of equipment, especially if you do a high volume. In a rapid-cook oven, you can do a phenomenal quesadilla quickly, even certain proteins such as shrimp and finishing off wings. If it’s something that takes a long time on another platform, maybe you parcook the item and then finish it off in [a speed oven]. Something that used to be complex, you make it simple.”

Ignacio Goris, Profitality Labor Guru

On micromarket design

“We’ve seen a big uptick in 24/7 unmanned micromarkets that are getting tied into other types of operations. Why can’t we use the same displays when there is somebody there and when there’s not somebody there? [By using the same displays], employees are only loading one cooler instead of having to load one that’s open during the day and then unload it or lock it down at night. It’s one service style while there’s people there serving in the cafe, and then there’s an unmanned service style for that same cooler during off hours.”

Joseph Shumaker, FCSI, FoodSpace