By Commercial Service Company · August 26, 2026
Start With the Menu, Not the Equipment List
The fastest way to overspend on a build-out is to buy equipment first and figure out the menu later. Your menu determines how much cold storage you need, how much hot line you need, how much hood you need over it, and how much power and gas have to reach the back of the house. A concept built around fresh produce and scratch prep has a very different refrigeration profile than one built around frozen product and fryers. Write the menu, count the covers you expect at peak, then build the equipment list from that. Everything in this guide gets easier once those two numbers exist.
Plan Your Refrigeration Load Before You Sign a Lease
Refrigeration is where new operators most often get squeezed. Walk-ins, reach-ins, prep tables, undercounter units, ice machines and beverage systems all reject heat into your building, and they all need somewhere to put it. Before you commit to a space, get a professional look at:
- Total cold storage you actually need for your delivery schedule — twice-weekly deliveries need more box than daily ones
- Whether condensing units will be self-contained, remote, or on a rack, and where they can physically live
- Ice machine capacity and, just as important, where the machine can breathe and drain
- Clearances around every condenser — units crammed into a closet or against a wall run hot and fail early
Central Arkansas summers are hard on refrigeration. Equipment that was sized for a catalog rating and installed in a hot, unventilated back room will struggle in July no matter how good the nameplate looks. Refrigerant handling and charging is EPA-regulated work — that belongs to a licensed technician, not to a contractor's helper and not to you.
HVAC Has to Account for the Kitchen, Not Just the Dining Room
A common and expensive mistake is treating the building's HVAC as a dining-room comfort problem. It isn't. Your exhaust hood pulls a large volume of air out of the kitchen, and that air has to be replaced by conditioned or tempered makeup air. If it isn't, the building goes negative: doors get hard to open, the hood stops capturing smoke properly, and the dining room feels drafty and never holds temperature. Get exhaust, makeup air and the rooftop or split systems designed together, and make sure someone has accounted for the heat your cooking line and refrigeration condensers are dumping into the space. It is far cheaper to correct an airflow problem on paper than after the ceiling is closed up.
Get Electrical and Gas Loads on Paper Early
Nearly every piece of commercial kitchen equipment has a data plate listing voltage, phase, amperage and gas input. Collect those plates — or the spec sheets — for every unit on your list before construction starts, and hand the whole package to your electrician and mechanical contractor. That single step prevents the most common opening-week surprise: discovering the service, panel or gas line coming into the building won't carry the load you just bought. Watch for three-phase versus single-phase requirements, dedicated circuits, and equipment that needs a disconnect within sight. Electrical service work and gas piping are licensed, permitted trades in Arkansas. Do not let anyone talk you into an unpermitted shortcut on either one, and never attempt gas or high-voltage connections yourself.
Installation and Startup Are Two Different Jobs
Setting equipment in place is not the same as commissioning it. A proper startup means the unit is leveled, connected, charged or piped correctly, verified against the manufacturer's specifications, and run through its cycle while someone watches the numbers. Ask your installer to confirm refrigeration temperatures and superheat, verify gas pressures and combustion where applicable, check rotation on three-phase motors, confirm drains actually drain, and register warranties. Then have them walk your kitchen manager through daily and weekly maintenance on each unit. Get startup documentation in writing — it becomes your baseline. When a cooler starts running warm eighteen months from now, knowing what it did on day one saves real diagnostic time.
Line Up a Service Partner Before You Open
The worst time to find a service company is at 5:30 on a Friday with a walk-in at 52 degrees and a full book. Establish the relationship during construction, while there's no emergency, so the technicians who respond already know your building. A good service partner should have your equipment list and model numbers on file, know where your shutoffs and panels are, cover refrigeration, HVAC, cooking equipment, ice and electrical rather than sending you to four vendors, and offer planned maintenance — coil cleaning, ice machine sanitation, filter changes, hood-side airflow checks — that keeps small problems from becoming closures. Preventive maintenance is boring right up until it's the reason you didn't lose a weekend of sales.
Commercial Service Company has been keeping central Arkansas businesses running since 1976, from Conway and Little Rock to Benton, Bryant, Maumelle, Jacksonville, Searcy and Russellville. If you're planning a build-out, remodel or equipment replacement, call us at 501-548-2374 and let's get your loads, installation and service plan lined up before opening day.