MEP for Restaurants

The Kitchen Is the Whole Game

The kitchen sets the restaurant’s largest ventilation, gas, grease, and power demands — and each one must be designed from the actual equipment package.

Four things across the cook line and prep area set the tone for much of the MEP design:

01The Exhaust Hood

Cooking appliances that produce grease or smoke generally require a Type I hood and grease-rated ductwork, subject to the adopted code's exceptions. Type II hoods serve appliances producing heat, moisture or combustion products without grease or smoke; their requirements and permitted exceptions depend on the adopted mechanical code. The hood type, size, and duct routing are governed by the adopted mechanical code (IMC, or the UMC where a state uses it) and, for Type I grease exhaust, NFPA 96 (the standard for commercial kitchen ventilation), and they cascade into the rest of the mechanical design. One practical detail that matters more than it sounds: grease-duct cleanouts have to be reachable, because they have to be cleaned — regularly, for the life of the building.

02Make-Up Air

Every cubic foot the hood exhausts — its exhaust CFM — has to be replaced. Replacement air can come from a dedicated make-up air unit, HVAC outdoor-air supply and transfer air from adjacent spaces. The final split comes from the whole-building air balance, accounting for all exhaust systems, hood capture performance and the intended kitchen-to-dining pressure relationship. Make-up air must meet the adopted code's temperature requirements; heating or other tempering may be needed for winter design conditions. Untempered air can cause comfort and commissioning complaints. If make-up air falls short, the whole building goes negative: doors whistle and are hard to open, the HVAC fights itself, and in winter the dining room freezes while the kitchen pulls cold air under the front door. Hood exhaust rates come from the mechanical code’s table by appliance duty (extra-heavy, heavy, medium, light) and hood type (wall-mounted canopy, single or double island, backshelf, eyebrow), in cfm per linear foot of hood — while a listed hood (UL 710) can run at the airflow its listing establishes. Exhaust termination follows NFPA 96 and the mechanical code for roof clearances, discharge direction and velocity. Where the energy code triggers it, demand-controlled kitchen ventilation (DCKV) modulates exhaust and make-up air with cooking load. Make-up air isn't optional; it's half the ventilation design, and it's what an air balance confirms before occupancy.

03Grease Management

Grease-laden kitchen wastewater can't go straight to the sewer, so those fixtures drain through a grease interceptor sized and placed per the local sewer authority's rules and the adopted plumbing code (IPC or UPC) — part of the same plumbing design that covers floor drains, floor sinks, and indirect waste — prep sinks and ice machines discharge through an air gap, and warewashing through an air gap or air break, to a floor sink or receptor, an item health inspectors check — plus backflow prevention on the domestic feed. Size the water heater by the fixture method or by meals per hour, with the dish machine’s final-rinse demand included. Get the interceptor's sizing or location wrong and it's a health-department and plan-review problem — and a very unpleasant one to fix after the floor is poured.

04Gas Service & Distribution

Cooking equipment gas loads have to be reconciled against the actual equipment package, line by line, and the gas piping sized for it using the fuel-gas code’s pipe-sizing tables (longest-length or branch-length method, IFGC / NFPA 54) against the reconciled connected load, with the regulator selected from the manufacturer’s capacity data. When the equipment schedule changes late, the gas design has to keep up.

Why the Equipment Schedule Runs the Show

The equipment schedule is the starting point for utility loads, exhaust demand, connection points, and final MEP sizing.

Here's the thing that surprises people: in a restaurant, the kitchen equipment schedule drives much of the MEP. Every piece of cooking equipment — the range, the dish machine — has a power requirement, a gas load, an exhaust demand, or a plumbing connection, often several, and the electrical side gets sized off a panel and load calc that applies the kitchen-equipment demand factors the electrical code allows rather than assuming every appliance runs flat-out at once. The MEP can't be finalized until that equipment package is reasonably locked, ideally by the end of design development, because the numbers come straight from it. (See how to read an MEP equipment schedule for what that document actually shows.)

This is why late equipment changes can be so costly on restaurants. Swap a range for a larger one and you may have moved the gas load, the hood size, the make-up air, and the electrical all at once. One useful step to protect your budget and your timeline is to firm up the kitchen equipment early and get it to your MEP engineer.

The table shows the kind of connection each item drives. The numbers come from your actual equipment schedule.

The Dining Room Still Matters

Guest comfort, odor control, restrooms, lighting, and life safety still require coordinated design beyond the cook line.

Beyond the kitchen, a restaurant is typically an assembly (A-2) space, and that carries its own MEP:

• Comfort and odor control — the dining room has to stay comfortable while the line runs hot, with cooling capacity sized from a load calculation and outdoor air determined under the adopted mechanical code, using ASHRAE 62.1 where applicable. Demand-controlled ventilation can adjust outdoor airflow where permitted, and kitchen and trash odors have to be kept out of the guest area by design, not by luck.
• Restrooms — fixture counts are driven by occupancy, and assembly occupancies pack a lot of people into a small footprint.
• Lighting and power — dining ambiance lighting and dimming control, egress and emergency lighting, patio and signage circuits, and dedicated equipment circuits sized to the electrical code (NEC) as part of the building's electrical design, plus the hood fire-suppression interlocks — the automatic shutoff of fuel and heat-producing electrical power to the protected cooking equipment — covered in more detail below.

How Fire Protection & Hood Suppression Coordinate

CoreX does not design the listed hood suppression system; it coordinates the hood, fuel shutoff and electrical shutdown interfaces around it.

A commercial kitchen has real fire-protection requirements — but not all of them are MEP's to design, and the boundary matters:

• The exhaust hood and grease-rated ductwork are mechanical MEP work, designed to the mechanical code and NFPA 96 (commercial kitchen ventilation).
• The wet-chemical hood suppression system (the "Ansul-type" system over the cooking line, to NFPA 96 / NFPA 17A) is a listed system designed and installed by the fire-suppression contractor — by others. MEP's job is to coordinate the interlocks: when that system trips, it must shut off the gas to every appliance under the hood, the heat-producing electrical power to the protected cooking equipment, and any make-up air supplied internally to the hood (the exhaust fan normally keeps running unless the listing or system design requires shutdown). Designing those electrical and gas shutoff interfaces cleanly is on MEP.
• Building fire sprinklers are designed by others — a fire-protection engineer or a licensed sprinkler contractor, depending on the state and delivery method. MEP coordinates ceiling/shaft space and the power/monitoring interface. Fire alarm (NFPA 72) is in CoreX's scope.

The reason this coordination is worth naming: the fire marshal reviews the kitchen closely, and a suppression system whose gas/power shutoff interlock wasn't coordinated is exactly the kind of thing that fails at inspection. For the fuller by-others picture, see MEP scope: who's responsible for what.

MEP by Restaurant Type: Fast-Casual to Ghost Kitchen

The same four design levers recur across restaurant types, but their scale changes with the operating model and equipment mix.

The kitchen drives the MEP — but which kitchen changes the whole load picture:

• Fast-casual / QSR. Smaller cook line, but often heavy fryer/griddle loads concentrated tight — hood and make-up air still dominate; electrical is dense per square foot.
• Full-service / fine dining. Bigger, more varied cook line (ranges, ovens, broilers), larger Type I hoods, more gas, plus a dining room with real comfort and odor-control demands.
• Bakery / café. Ovens drive heat and sometimes Type II hoods; proofers, refrigeration, and domestic hot water and water-heater sizing matter more than a heavy grease profile.
• Ghost / cloud kitchen. Multiple small kitchens under one roof — the challenge is repetition and separation: metering, exhaust for many hoods, and make-up air balanced across bays.
• Food court / commissary. Shared exhaust and grease infrastructure, tenant metering, and coordination across many operators — the same questions that come up on any mixed-use or tenant fit-out project.

The Restaurant MEP Mistakes That Show Up at Inspection

Inspection failures can begin with late or incomplete equipment information, then surface as ventilation, grease, gas, or interlock problems.

Restaurants get reviewed by the building department, health department, and fire marshal — so mistakes surface fast and late:

1. Under-balanced make-up air — the building goes into negative pressure, doors whistle, the dining room can't hold temperature.
2. Grease interceptor undersized or badly located — a health-department and plan-review problem, brutal to fix after the slab is poured.
3. Uncleanable grease-duct cleanouts — code requires access; miss it and every future cleaning is a fight.
4. Gas load not reconciled to the final equipment schedule — a late range swap moves gas, hood, make-up air, and power at once.
5. Suppression interlock not coordinated — the hood system trips but doesn't cleanly cut gas/power (see above).

Several of them can trace to one root cause: the kitchen equipment package wasn't locked early enough for MEP to design against.

Why This Helps Protect Your Opening

Early kitchen coordination helps protect the opening date by resolving the issues reviewed by building, health, and fire authorities before construction.

Restaurants are typically reviewed by several authorities — the building department, the health department, and the fire marshal all have a say, and the kitchen is where their requirements concentrate. A design that gets the hood, make-up air, grease, and gas right up front, documented for those reviewers, gives the reviewer and the inspector what they need without the last-minute scramble that pushes an opening date.

That's a major budget risk on a restaurant: not the engineering fee, but the cost of getting it wrong and finding out during inspection.

Related: MEP Coordination Best Practices · MEP Scope: Who's Responsible for What · What Are MEP Drawings?

If you're working on a restaurant — ground-up, tenant fit-out, or ghost kitchen — the earlier the MEP and the kitchen equipment get coordinated, the smoother the whole thing runs. See how we approach restaurants and food service, or schedule a scope call to talk through your concept.

Common Questions

Straight answers to the scope, code, timing, and coordination questions teams ask before restaurant MEP design begins.