Restaurant Electrician for Commercial Kitchens and Restaurant Build-Outs in South Florida

Restaurants and commercial kitchens

What a restaurant needs from its electrical contractor

Why restaurant electrical work is different

A restaurant packs more connected load into less floor area than almost any other small commercial tenant. Most of that load makes heat or cold, much of it sits in wet or greasy areas, and several trades depend on the same circuits: the hood installer, the suppression contractor, the refrigeration contractor, the plumber with the gas valve, and the kitchen equipment dealer who wrote the schedule.

Restaurant inspections are rarely failed over a receptacle count. They are failed over a hood that does not shut the cooking equipment down, a walk-in with no disconnect at the condensing unit, or a fryer that arrives needing a different voltage from the one roughed in. Almost all of that can be settled on paper before anyone opens a wall.

This page covers the restaurant-specific part of a job. The general sequence for a remodel or tenant improvement is on our commercial remodel and tenant improvement page, and the full range of work is on our commercial electrical services page. For a ground-up restaurant pad, see new construction electrical.

Start with the equipment schedule, not the floor plan

The kitchen equipment schedule is the most important electrical document on a restaurant job. For every item it should give voltage, phase, amperage or kilowatts, whether the item is cord-and-plug or hardwired, the plug configuration if it has one, and where it sits. When a line says "by EC" with no nameplate data, that is a question to ask now, not at trim-out.

What gets checked line by line

• Voltage against the building. Many South Florida commercial spaces are 120/208V three-phase. Cooking equipment ordered at 240V will run on 208V at reduced output, or not at all if it is not rated for both. Our post on three-phase power and whether a space has it explains how to tell.
• Phase. Combi ovens, larger dish machines and some fryers are offered in single- and three-phase versions. Order the one the space can feed.
• Connection type. A cord-and-plug fryer needs the matching receptacle at the right height behind the line. A hardwired unit needs a disconnect where the code and the manufacturer want it.
• Diversity. The engineer's load calculation decides whether the service can carry everything together. Restaurants run most of their equipment at the same time at peak, so generous diversity assumptions do not hold up.

Each heavy item gets its own properly sized circuit. That is the core of our dedicated circuits and equipment connections work, and it is also where tenant equipment power starts: what the unit's supply can actually carry.

Walk-in coolers, freezers and refrigeration

A walk-in is several electrical loads, not one. There is the evaporator inside the box, the condensing unit outside or on the roof, defrost heaters (on freezers especially), door frame heaters, box lighting and often a monitoring or alarm module. The refrigeration contractor's submittal should show which of these the electrician feeds directly and which get their power through the condensing unit.

• A disconnect at the condensing unit, in an enclosure suited to a rooftop in salt air. Coastal corrosion eats cheap enclosures and fittings in a few seasons.
• A service receptacle near rooftop equipment. Miami-Dade's inspection guidelines check for GFCI protection on receptacles on rooftops of non-dwelling buildings (Miami-Dade electrical inspection guidelines).
• Refrigeration on its own circuits, never shared with prep-line receptacles, so a tripped mixer does not quietly spoil a freezer's worth of product overnight.

The hood, the suppression system and the interlocks

Three trades meet at one set of wires here. The hood manufacturer supplies the hood and usually its control package. A specialist fire suppression contractor designs, installs and tests the suppression system; that is their licensed scope, not the electrician's. The electrical contractor provides the power and the control wiring that makes the rest of the kitchen respond when that system goes off.

Miami-Dade's mechanical inspection guidelines list what inspectors check here: the Type I hood exhaust fan interlocked with the cooking appliances, makeup air electrically interlocked with the exhaust, and a cooking fire suppression system that automatically shuts down fuel and electrical power, with a manual reset (Miami-Dade mechanical inspection guidelines).

Miami Beach's fire inspection checklist spells out what should happen when the suppression system discharges: the gas supply valve shuts, all electrical outlets under the hood are de-energized, a visual device in the kitchen activates, and the building fire alarm activates if the building has one (City of Miami Beach fire inspection checklists). Confirm the sequence with the officials who have the job.

How the electrical side is usually built

• Every circuit feeding heat-producing equipment under the hood, including receptacles for cord-connected equipment, goes through a shunt-trip breaker or a contactor that the suppression system can open.
• The suppression contractor provides the dry contacts in the release mechanism. The electrician wires from those contacts to the shunt trips or contactor coil, and powers the gas solenoid valve the plumber installs.
• Hood fans and makeup air get their own circuits and controls, wired so the fans behave the way the approved mechanical drawings say during a discharge.

What goes wrong

• A receptacle under the hood left on an ordinary circuit, so a countertop fryer plugged into it keeps heating after a discharge.
• Equipment moved or added after the final inspection, onto a circuit that is not interlocked.
• Nobody on staff knows the reset sequence, so a false trip at 6 pm closes the kitchen for the night.

The fix is to plan the test. Schedule the trip test with the suppression contractor, the electrician and the hood installer on site together, and prove every protected circuit dead before calling for the inspection.

Wet areas, GFCI and the dish room

Commercial kitchens need ground-fault protection on their receptacles. Miami-Dade's guidelines check for GFCI protection on receptacles in kitchens and bathrooms of non-dwelling buildings (Miami-Dade electrical inspection guidelines). Refrigeration and some cooking equipment can nuisance-trip a GFCI. The answer is to choose the right connection for the equipment, and to ask the engineer and the manufacturer where it is unclear. Leaving the protection off is not an answer.

The dish room is its own problem. A dish machine with a booster heater is often one of the largest single loads in the kitchen. Hose-down cleaning means devices need to sit where water will not reach them, with covers suited to the location.

Gas to electric and induction: check the service first

More operators are moving from gas to induction or all-electric lines. Turning off a gas line frees no electrical capacity. A full induction line can add more load than the rest of the kitchen combined, and it often wants three-phase.

Run the load calculation before the equipment is ordered. If the service cannot carry it, the options are a service increase, a smaller electric line, or keeping some gas equipment. Our post on when a business outgrows its electrical service covers the signs, and commercial service and switchgear covers the work itself.

A service increase involves the utility, and its schedule is often the longest item on the job. FPL asks customers to contact it early because planning a new project can take a few months (FPL construction project portal). Not every address is FPL: Homestead, for example, is served by the city-owned HPS Energy (City of Homestead, HPS Energy). The utility timeline for new commercial service walks through the steps.

Second-generation restaurant space

Taking over an existing restaurant can save months, but only if the inherited electrical system matches the new menu. Before the lease is signed or the equipment ordered, check:

• Service size and panel space against the new equipment schedule, not the old one.
• Whether the existing hood interlock still works. Shunt trips get bypassed and contactors get jumpered over years of repairs. Test it.
• Panel schedules. In an older restaurant they are often wrong. Trace the circuits before relying on them.
• Grease and heat damage to wiring above the line and in the hood area, and corrosion at rooftop disconnects.
• Abandoned circuits and equipment connections left from the last layout. Remove them properly so they are not mistaken for live ones later.

Our guide to electrical questions to ask before signing a commercial lease lists what to put to the landlord, and the restaurant build-out electrical checklist turns this into a working list.

Front of house: POS, screens, sound and lighting

• POS and kitchen display screens. Dedicated circuits for terminals, printers and kitchen display screens, with data cabling run alongside. Kitchen printers and screens sit in heat and grease, so their locations get chosen with the line cooks, not only the IT vendor.
• Host stand, bar and service stations. Receptacles and data where the furniture ends up, including under-bar equipment such as glass washers and ice bins with their own circuits.
• Dining-room lighting. Scenes for lunch, dinner and cleaning, and dimming that is compatible with the chosen fixtures. Our commercial lighting and controls page covers controls and energy code.
• Low-voltage cabling. Data, sound and camera cabling run to where the vendors need it. KRW runs the low-voltage cabling; the POS, sound and camera systems themselves come from their own vendors.
• Exit and emergency lighting. Dining rooms are dark at night by design, and the emergency and egress lighting has to work when the room lighting does not.

Permits, inspections and after-hours work

Electrical work on a restaurant is permitted separately from the building work. Miami-Dade's building permit application states that separate permits are required for electrical, plumbing, signs and mechanical work (Miami-Dade building permit application). In Miami-Dade, each municipality has its own building official who issues permits within its limits, and the county's process covers only unincorporated areas (Miami-Dade, how to apply for permits), so the department that has the job depends on the address. Our commercial electrical permits page explains how that works across the three counties.

Work in an operating restaurant happens around service. Shutdowns get planned around deliveries and prep, refrigeration gets moved to temporary power or held closed, and noisy work happens after close. Our post on getting electrical work done without closing the business covers how the outage is kept short. After opening, preventive maintenance on kitchen circuits, rooftop disconnects and the interlock catches problems before a Friday night does.

What to decide early

1. A final equipment schedule with nameplate voltage, phase and connection type for every item.
2. Whether the service can carry the menu, especially with induction or all-electric cooking.
3. Which equipment sits under the hood, so every circuit feeding it is interlocked.
4. Who supplies the suppression contacts, the gas valve and the hood controls, and when the trip test is scheduled.
5. Walk-in and rooftop equipment locations, with disconnect and receptacle positions.
6. Front-of-house layout for POS, bar equipment and screens before the walls close.

Planning a project? Send the drawings and equipment list through our contact page or call (305) 359-7312.