Food Prep Table Layout Calculator

It runs a staff-based estimate (prep cooks × linear feet per cook, scaled by how much is cooked from scratch) and a volume-based estimate (daily meals × a smaller per-meal footage factor), then keeps whichever is larger. This catches two different failure modes: a lean staff turning out high meal volume, or a large staff prepping modest volume — either input alone could undersize the kitchen if used by itself.

Both the per-cook and per-meal footage factors are scaled up as scratch level rises (from 3 ft/cook at "mostly pre-made" to 5 ft/cook at "everything from scratch"), because from-scratch prep needs room for mise en place, cutting, and staging that pre-portioned food doesn't. Since both sizing methods use these scaled factors, a higher scratch level raises whichever total ends up winning.

It assumes standard 6-foot commercial prep tables and rounds your required linear footage up to the next whole table, then recalculates every downstream figure — surface area, floor space, under-shelf storage — from that rounded, slightly larger total rather than the raw unrounded number.

Hand-wash sinks are sized at one per two prep stations (rounded up), reflecting how often staff need to wash between raw and ready-to-eat handling, while prep/produce sinks are sized more sparingly at one per four cooks since they're used less frequently per person. With an odd headcount, both counts round up rather than down so sink access isn't understaffed.