Restaurant MEP Engineering

Restaurant owners, operators and their architects hire Engineous Group for mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering on restaurants, cafes and food service spaces across Southern California. We have engineered restaurant work for national chains and independent operators alike, from a single cafe build-out to programs covering dozens of locations.

Request a consultation → or call (626) 696-3850

Restaurant and food service experience

Our restaurant portfolio includes multi-site programs and one-off projects:

• Starbucks: over 100 sites throughout Southern California and Hawaii
• Morton’s of Chicago: over 12 sites throughout the U.S.
• The Palm Restaurant: locations in Southern California, Texas and Florida
• Baja Fresh: various Southern California locations
• Independent restaurants and cafes including MiPiace, Board Room, Ceviche, Hong Mei Quan, Tio’s III, Marmalade Café, Old Vine Café, Broken Yolk Café and Kabo Cafe
• Entertainment and retail dining, including restaurant and bar spaces at the Pacific Theater at Sherman Oaks Galleria and Island Theaters at Fashion Island, and the South Bay Pavilion food court

See the full lists on our national restaurant chain projects and independent restaurant projects pages.

What a restaurant MEP scope covers

Food service spaces put more demand on building systems per square foot than almost any other tenant type. A typical restaurant MEP scope includes:

• Mechanical: dining room HVAC, kitchen exhaust and make-up air, and coordination of the hood with the rest of the system so the space stays balanced and comfortable
• Plumbing: domestic water and hot water, waste and vent, grease waste, and natural gas sized to the cooking equipment
• Electrical: service and panel capacity for kitchen equipment, lighting, and power distribution
• Refrigeration: where the project calls for it, central refrigeration is part of our mechanical engineering services
• Title 24: energy compliance documentation prepared alongside the drawings

Getting through plan check

Restaurant projects are usually reviewed by more than one agency: the local building department for the building systems, and the county environmental health department for the food facility. Corrections most often come from documentation that does not match across the set, not from the engineering itself. Coordinating the mechanical, plumbing and electrical design inside one firm keeps the drawings consistent before they are submitted. For projects in the City of Los Angeles, see our LADBS permitting and Title 24 guide.

Where we work

We are based in Pasadena and work across Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, the Inland Empire and the rest of California.

To get a quote

Send the architectural set and the project address, along with the kitchen equipment schedule if you have one. Those are usually enough for us to define scope and send a fee.

“They consistently deliver client-conscious and value-oriented design. Their fees are always competitive and comprehensive, and they typically avoid nickel and diming us with change orders which is quite difficult to achieve on retail projects in particular.”

Jim Glina
Architects Orange, LLP