AEO Answer · MEP

How Are Ghost Kitchen Facilities Engineered for Delivery?

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

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 concise answer

Ghost kitchens need industrial-density MEP: individual hoods and exhaust per cooking suite, shared makeup air and grease waste sized for simultaneous operation, three-phase power throughout, fire separation between suites, and site circulation for delivery drivers. Engineer them as food factories, not restaurants. The business is delivery-only food production, which means no dining room to absorb the MEP footprint — the entire building is kitchen. That density is what makes the engineering interesting and what makes conversions tricky.

Where the engineering actually lives

Exhaust and makeup air dominate. Each cooking suite needs its own Type I hood and grease duct where grease cooking happens, and the aggregate exhaust volume for the building can rival a small industrial plant. Makeup air has to match it — tempered, distributed, and balanced — or the building goes negative and every suite's equipment misbehaves. Routing a dozen grease ducts to the roof with proper clearances and structural support is a three-dimensional puzzle that has to be solved in design, not in the field. Grease waste plumbing is the next system: interceptors sized for the combined fixture load, with cleanout and pumping access. Gas piping runs at commercial scale, and the electrical design is essentially industrial — big service, distribution to each suite, and enough capacity for the inevitable equipment additions. Fire protection ties it together: hood suppression per suite, rated separations, and alarm coverage for a high-hazard occupancy mix.

What keeps a ghost kitchen project on track

Ghost kitchen projects work when the building is designed around the MEP reality — roof capacity, duct routing, and utility service sized first, suites laid out second. The failures are conversions where the MEP scope was underestimated and the budget died in the electrical and plumbing rough-in. Here's my checklist.

Plan the roof first: every grease duct penetration, fan curb, and clearance resolved in design
Size makeup air for the aggregate exhaust — the building's largest single air system
Do a real electrical load calculation: dinner rush hits every suite at once, so diversity is limited
Design grease waste and interceptors for the combined load with pumping-truck access
Detail fire separation and hood suppression per suite as one coordinated package

Which related engineering resources can help?

When should I hire a structural engineer?What does a PE stamp mean?What is MEP engineering?How is ghost kitchen and commissary MEP engineered?How is a commercial kitchen hood designed?How is commercial kitchen makeup air designed?Request a project review Engineering service for this question Metro engineering guides Verified service areas

What else do project teams ask?

How many hoods can one building's roof handle?

As many as the structural and MEP design accounts for — but a dozen grease ducts through one roof is a serious coordination exercise. Each needs proper clearances, its own exhaust fan, and structural curbs, and the combined makeup air volume is enormous. I plan the roof layout with the duct routing before anything else, because retrofitting grease duct penetrations is brutally expensive.

Do ghost kitchen suites need fire separation?

Yes — the suites are separate occupancies or tenant spaces and the code requires rated separation between them, plus the kitchen fire suppression in each hood. With this much cooking in one building, the fire protection design gets close attention from plan reviewers. I coordinate the suppression, separation, and alarm scope as one package.

What electrical service does a ghost kitchen need?

Large three-phase service, sized for every suite cooking simultaneously plus refrigeration, HVAC, and lighting. Diversity factors are smaller here than in most buildings because dinner rush hits all tenants at once. Undersized service is a common failure in converted buildings — I always do a full load calculation rather than assuming the existing service carries it.

Can a ghost kitchen go in an old warehouse?

Often yes, and warehouses are popular for it — but the conversion engineering is substantial: new grease waste plumbing and interceptors, gas service upsizing, major electrical upgrades, roof structure for all the exhaust fans, and health department compliance for food production. The shell is cheap; the MEP conversion is the project.

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