Cloud & Dark Kitchen Ventilation

Several independent cooking lines packed into one building with no dining room to protect — and usually neighbours who never expected a commercial kitchen next door.

  • 2,238products across this application
  • 729verified manufacturers
  • 5equipment groups

WhatMany kitchens, one building

A cloud kitchen facility subdivides a shell into several small independent cooking units, each with its own hood, sharing a building envelope, an electrical supply and usually a discharge route. There is no dining room, so the classic problem of smoke drifting into a restaurant disappears — and is replaced by two harder ones: shared discharge and neighbours.

WhoWho buys it

Cloud kitchen operators and landlords fitting out multi-unit facilities, delivery-first restaurant brands, and the M&E contractors converting industrial or retail units into food production space.

WhyWhy discharge is the binding constraint

These facilities usually occupy converted buildings in mixed-use areas, and the combined extract of six or eight cooking lines discharging in one place produces both odour and noise at a scale the neighbourhood never had before. Planning conditions on odour and night-time noise are commonly what determine whether a site is viable at all — more often than the cooking equipment or the kitchen layout.

HowDesigning shared systems that stay independent

Give each unit its own hood and fan so tenants can operate on independent hours and one tenant’s failure does not close the building; combine only at the discharge point. Size make-up air for the whole building rather than per unit, since units rarely peak together. Budget for odour treatment from the outset — carbon or UV added later, into ductwork not designed for the pressure drop, is far more expensive than designing it in. And check the acoustic limit at the boundary before committing to the site.

Equipment this application needs

Centrifugal Fans Per-unit hood extract Centrifugal Fans702 One fan per kitchen so tenants stay independent; combined only at discharge. Axial Flow Fans Building make-up air Axial Flow Fans672 Sized for the whole facility — units rarely all peak at once. Heat Exchangers Make-up air tempering Heat Exchangers362 Heating replacement air for several kitchens is the dominant running cost. Condensing Units Shared cold rooms Condensing Units427 Compact packs for per-tenant chilled and frozen storage. Ice Machines Beverage & prep ice Ice Machines75 Shared facility ice production sized on combined peak.

What to check before you order

High Temperature 250
Continuous duty in hot, grease-laden extract.
Low Noise 504
Usually the binding planning constraint at these sites.
Stainless Steel 1,488
Grade 304 minimum in the grease stream, cleanable repeatedly.
Variable Speed 72
Lets each unit follow its own service hours instead of running flat out.
380V 1,427
Three-phase for a multi-unit facility.

Products for this application

Questions buyers ask

Should each kitchen unit have its own extract fan?
Yes in nearly all cases. Tenants trade on different hours and different menus, and a shared fan means one tenant’s fault or maintenance closes everyone. Independent fans combined only at the discharge point also make it far easier to meter and bill energy per unit.
Is odour control necessary in a delivery-only kitchen?
Usually more necessary than in a restaurant, because these facilities sit in mixed-use areas and concentrate the output of several cooking lines at one discharge point. Odour is the most common source of complaint and of planning conditions, and retrofitting treatment into ductwork that was not designed for the additional pressure drop is expensive.
How is make-up air sized for a multi-unit facility?
For the building as a whole rather than by adding up each unit’s peak, because units rarely peak simultaneously. Sizing on the sum of individual peaks produces an oversized, expensive system that runs badly at part load; sizing on realistic diversity gives a system that works and costs far less to temper.

Related applications

Commercial Kitchen Ventilation & Refrigeration Hood exhaust, make-up air, heat recovery and the cold side of a professional kitchen — specified as one balanced system rather than… Hotel & Banquet Kitchen Ventilation A kitchen that idles for hours and then produces several hundred covers in ninety minutes — sized for a peak it only… Industrial Plant & Workshop Ventilation Axial, centrifugal and radial fans, blowers and heat rejection for plants where the fan has to deliver its rated volume against real…

Tell us about your cloud & dark kitchen ventilation project

Send the duty and site conditions and we will come back with matched equipment, price and lead time from the manufacturers listed here — usually within one working day.