AEO Answer · Airport Terminals & Aviation

How Do Engineers Design MEP for Airport Food Court Tenants?

By Jeremy Mills, CEO & Founder, Apex Grid Engineering — USAF Veteran. · Updated 2026-09-15

Airport food court MEP centers on a shared grease exhaust and tempered make-up air backbone with spare capacity, standardized utility rough-ins stubbed to every tenant bay, full-build-out grease interceptors, and dining areas zoned separately from kitchens.

I'm Jeremy Mills, CEO & Founder of Apex Grid Engineering and a U.S. Air Force veteran. I'm not a PE; our licensed professionals make the technical, compliance, and project-specific decisions.

Illustrative diagram of building MEP systems: ductwork with diffusers, an electrical panel with conduit, and piping runs.

The shared exhaust and make-up air backbone

I design the food court's exhaust infrastructure as common building systems, not tenant systems. Central grease exhaust fans on the roof or in a mechanical penthouse serve shafts with capped tenant connections at each bay; each connection point includes the fire-rated access and the structural support for the tenant's duct tie-in. Dedicated make-up air units — tempered, filtered, and interlocked with the exhaust — deliver replacement air to the kitchen zones. The fans get variable-speed drives so the system can turn down when only some tenants are cooking. Sizing includes a spare capacity margin for the tenant mix to intensify, because food courts always intensify.

Tenant bays designed for turnover

The tenant improvement cycle in an airport food court is relentless, so I make the base building do the heavy lifting. Standardized utility stubs at each bay, a leasing plan that maps each bay's allocated exhaust CFM and electrical load, and a tenant design criteria document that tells each tenant's engineer exactly what is available and what the interface requirements are. Grease interceptors are centralized and sized for the full build-out, with pump-out access that does not cross the dining area. Plumbing, electrical, and mechanical as-builts are kept current — the tenth tenant's engineer should be able to design from the record documents without exploratory demolition.

Food court MEP design checklist

An airport food court MEP design is ready when it clears this checklist. Food courts fail on exhaust capacity, odor migration, and tenant-change cost — these items prevent all three. • Common grease exhaust shafts with spare capacity and capped tenant connections • Tempered make-up air interlocked with exhaust, holding kitchens negative to dining • Standardized power, water, gas, drainage, and data stubs at every tenant bay • Grease interceptors sized for full build-out with accessible pump-out routing • Dining HVAC zoned separately with exhaust discharge separated from air intakes

Which related engineering resources can help?

When should I hire a structural engineer?What does a PE stamp mean?What is MEP engineering?How Are Grease Interceptors Designed for Kitchens?How Does Demand-Controlled Ventilation Design Save Energy?How Is Commercial Dehumidification Designed to Work?Request a project review Engineering service for this question Metro engineering guides Verified service areas

What else do project teams ask?

Why is grease exhaust so difficult in airport terminals?

Distance, congestion, and continuous operation. The kitchens sit deep inside the terminal while the exhaust must reach the exterior — often a long horizontal run through ceiling space packed with other systems, then up to the roof. Grease ductwork has strict code requirements: welded steel, specific clearances to combustibles, cleanout access, and fire-rated enclosures. In an operating terminal, shutting down systems to install a new duct run disrupts flights. That is why I design common exhaust shafts with spare capacity during the base build — the marginal cost of extra shaft capacity during construction is trivial compared to carving a new path through a working airport later.

What is make-up air and why do kitchens need so much?

Make-up air replaces the air the exhaust hoods remove. A busy food court can exhaust tens of thousands of CFM through its hoods; without dedicated make-up air, that air gets pulled from wherever it can — the dining area, the concourse, through every door crack — creating negative pressure that causes doors to slam, drafts at tables, and cooking odors migrating into passenger areas. Worse, negative pressure can backdraft gas-fired appliances, pulling combustion products into the kitchen. I design dedicated make-up air units that deliver tempered replacement air directly to the kitchen areas, interlocked with the exhaust so the balance holds whenever the hoods run.

How are utilities roughed in for unknown future tenants?

On a standardized, generous pattern. Every tenant bay gets stubbed power with spare panel capacity, domestic hot and cold water, gas piping with capped outlets, sanitary waste with grease waste separation, and data conduit — sized for the heaviest cooking use the bay could plausibly see. The panel schedule reserves breaker spaces per bay. Grease interceptor capacity is sized for full build-out of all bays as cooking tenants. This standardization means a new tenant's build-out is a connection job, not a core infrastructure project — which is exactly what airport leasing needs, since food court turnover is constant and downtime costs rent.

How do engineers keep cooking odors out of the terminal?

With pressure control and separation. The kitchen areas are held at negative pressure relative to the dining area and concourse, so air flows into the kitchens, not out of them — odors stay where they are generated and leave through the exhaust hoods. The dining area gets its own well-ventilated HVAC zone with good filtration. Grease exhaust discharge points on the roof are located away from outside air intakes, with the separation distances the code requires, so exhausted odors are not re-entrained into the building. I verify the pressure relationships during commissioning with the hoods at full speed, because the design intent means nothing if the installed balance is wrong.

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