Commissary and Ghost Kitchen Construction

Commissary and ghost kitchens turn one building into a stack of small commercial kitchens. A shared commissary kitchen rents prep space and equipment to food businesses that need a licensed kitchen without their own buildout. A ghost kitchen — also called a cloud or delivery-only kitchen — is built purely to produce food for delivery and pickup, with no dining room at all. Both models put several independent kitchen operations inside a single shell, and that density is the heart of the construction problem.

The defining truth of these projects is that kitchen MEP — mechanical, electrical, and plumbing — is the budget. The architecture is modest: a series of small bays, a shared corridor, restrooms, and a pickup area. But every bay is a full commercial kitchen, and replicating exhaust, make-up air, gas, power, and refrigeration five or ten times over is where the money goes. A contractor who scopes a ghost kitchen like a generic tenant improvement will badly underbid it.

Two Models, One Building Type

Commissary and ghost kitchens overlap but are not identical, and the difference shapes the plan. A commissary leans toward shared, scheduled use — businesses book time in common prep areas, and the design emphasizes flexible open kitchen space, shared equipment, and dry and cold storage. A ghost kitchen leans toward dedicated, walled bays — each operator gets a private kitchen stall they run continuously, and the design emphasizes separation between tenants.

Many ghost-kitchen facilities are a hybrid: a handful of private bays plus some shared support. Either way, the contractor is building a multi-tenant food production building, not a single restaurant, and the demising, metering, and ventilation strategy has to reflect that.

The Heavy Kitchen MEP That Defines Cost

A single commercial kitchen is already an MEP-heavy space. A ghost kitchen multiplies that by the number of bays. The systems that drive the budget are predictable, and they all scale with bay count.

Exhaust and make-up air deserve special attention. Every Type I hood pulls a large volume of conditioned air out of the building, and code requires that air to be replaced. In a ten-bay facility, that means substantial rooftop make-up air equipment and a roof crowded with exhaust fans, ducts, and curbs. The roof structure has to carry that load, and the rooftop layout has to keep grease exhaust away from make-up air and any other fresh-air intakes.

Multiple Kitchen Bays in One Shell

Packing several kitchens into one shell creates coordination problems a single restaurant never faces. Each bay needs its own hood, gas, power, water, and drainage, and those services have to be distributed across the building without conflict. Where operators are billed separately, utilities may need individual metering or submetering per bay.

Ventilation and odor between tenants is the recurring issue. A bay running a high-heat wok line sits next to a bay baking, next to a bay frying. The exhaust system has to keep each bay's cooking effluent isolated and moving up its own duct, and the make-up air has to be balanced so air flows the right direction and one tenant's odors do not drift into the next stall. Demising partitions, balanced airflow, and disciplined hood design are what keep neighboring operators from cooking in each other's air.

Speed to Market Inside an Existing Shell

Ghost kitchens are usually built into existing buildings — vacant retail boxes, warehouse and industrial space, or older commercial structures — precisely because operators want to open fast and avoid ground-up cost and time. The shell already exists; the project is a heavy interior fit-out.

Existing shells bring their own friction. The available power service may be undersized for a building full of kitchens. Gas service may need an upgrade. The roof structure may not be ready for rows of make-up air units and exhaust fans. The contractor's job in pre-construction is to verify what the shell can actually support — electrical capacity, gas, roof structure, ceiling height for ductwork — before the schedule is promised.

Delivery-Driver Logistics and Circulation

A ghost kitchen exists to feed delivery, so the building has to handle a steady stream of delivery drivers arriving, waiting, and leaving with orders. Circulation design is a real part of the scope, not an afterthought. The pickup flow should keep drivers out of the production kitchens, give them a clear waiting and order-handoff area, and keep them from clogging the path of staff and deliveries.

On the site, peak lunch and dinner traffic can be heavy. Adequate short-term parking or a queuing lane, plus a pickup point near the entrance, keeps the operation from spilling into the surrounding lot or street.

Health-Department and Code Review

Every kitchen in the facility is a licensed food establishment, and the project has to clear both building code and health-department plan review. Health departments evaluate finishes, equipment layout, handwashing and warewashing, food storage, and grease management against the food code, and a multi-bay facility multiplies the number of fixtures and details under review.

Mechanical code governs the hoods and make-up air; plumbing code governs the grease interceptors and floor drains. The smart approach is to bring the health department into the conversation early, because their requirements — finish materials, fixture counts, separation of clean and dirty flows — feed directly into the construction documents. Catching those requirements before permit, rather than at a failed inspection, protects the speed-to-market schedule the whole model depends on.

Bottom Line

Commissary and ghost kitchen construction is multi-tenant food-production work where heavy kitchen MEP — exhaust hoods, make-up air, grease management, gas, power, and refrigeration — is the budget, scaled by the number of bays. The building packs multiple kitchens into one shell, so demising, utility distribution, and odor control between tenants are central. Operators build inside existing retail and industrial shells for speed, which makes verifying electrical, gas, and roof capacity a pre-construction priority. Delivery-driver pickup and circulation belong in the plan, and every bay must clear health-department and building code review. Contractors who scope the MEP honestly and respect the aggressive timeline deliver these facilities on the speed the model demands.