# Factory Canteen Design: 670 Seats on Two Floors, With a Training Centre

> Our concept design for a two-floor canteen building on a manufacturing site: 670 dining seats in three halls, a kitchen with its own preparation, cooking, store and wash rooms, welfare rooms including a daycare and an occupational health centre, and a training centre upstairs. One plan, shown in five finish options.

## The brief

A canteen building on a manufacturing site, ground plus one, each floor **74.5 x 24 m**
and about **3,576 m²** across the two. It had to feed the site at shift breaks, carry the
welfare rooms a large workforce needs, and give the plant a proper place to train people.

The answer is **two floors with two distinct programmes**: dining, kitchen and welfare on
the ground floor; a third dining hall and a training centre on the first. The furnished
plans start from the existing building drawings. The training furniture upstairs is new.

## Three halls, not one

| Hall | Floor | Seats |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Dining hall A | Ground | 156 |
| Dining hall B | Ground | 194 |
| Upper dining hall | First | 320 |
| **Total** | | **670** |

A single 670-seat room would be one long queue and one wall of noise. Splitting the seats
across three halls means each one is a manageable size at a shift break, and each one
gets **its own servery wall, drop-plate point, dish wash and handwash**. Nobody carries a
tray from one hall into another, and the upstairs hall does not depend on food carried up
the stair: it has its own **pantry of about 16.1 x 6.5 m** and its own wash.

On the ground floor the two halls sit either side of the **entrance corridor**, which
also holds the stair and lift. People arrive in the middle of the building and turn left
or right into a hall; they never walk through one hall to reach the other.

## The flow: wash, serve, sit, return

The plan keeps one direction through every hall:

1. **Wash** at a handwash room at the hall entrance, with an L-shaped run of basins on a
   steel frame and a matt floor laid to a drain.
2. **Collect** at a stainless-steel servery along the hall wall, with the menu board and
   drinking water beside it, not in the queue.
3. **Sit** at long tables in rows, loose chairs on a pedestal or frame base.
4. **Return** at a dish-return hatch next to the handwash, not next to the servery, so
   people finishing a meal never walk against people starting one.

Behind the counter the kitchen is laid out the same way. **Preparation (about 8.1 x 4.3 m)
and cooking (about 8.1 x 3.8 m)** sit side by side, with a wet store, dry stores, change
rooms, a garbage room and a wash area around them. Food goes out through the servery
hatch; plates come back through a separate return room with a scrape-sort-empty point, a
three-bowl sink and drying racks, then leave through a clean door.

Related: [factory canteen and amenity block planning](/blog/factory-canteen-and-amenity-block-planning) ·
[pantry and cafeteria fit-out](/services/interior-fit-out/pantry-and-cafeteria-fit-out)

## Welfare rooms on the ground floor

A canteen block on a large site is often where the welfare rooms go, because it already
has water, drainage and footfall. This plan carries:

- an **occupational health centre (OHC)** with a consultation desk, a curtained couch and
  its own toilets
- a **daycare** with a feeding room and a child-height washroom off it
- a **ladies' rest room** with WC and bath
- **staff change rooms** and a **driver rest room** with its own WC and bath

Each wet room is separate, so the daycare washroom is never shared with a kitchen change
room or a driver's bath.

## The training centre upstairs

Half of the first floor is training, in two parts:

- a **product and TV gallery**: a fixed display rail and screens along one wall, so
  trainees can see and handle the product they will be working on
- a **classroom** with rows of tablet chairs facing a screen wall, and **eight round
  tables** behind for group work

The ceiling is a **600 x 600 mm grid** with acoustic panels and regular LED panels, so a
room full of people and a presenter stays intelligible. The display rail has **concealed
cabling and independent supports**: screens and product samples are heavy, and their
loads are coordinated with the structure rather than hung from the ceiling grid.

Related: [acoustic design for offices](/services/interior-fit-out/acoustic-design-for-offices) ·
[false ceilings and partitions](/services/interior-fit-out/false-ceilings-and-partitions)

## Five finish options, one plan

All five options keep the same halls, the same servery and the same wet rooms. What
changes is the colour above the dado, the chairs, the tile banding and the mural theme.

| Option | Character |
| --- | --- |
| 01 Saffron and stone | Saffron walls, grey dado with green bands, grain-and-food murals |
| 02 Earth and craft | Sand and sage, terracotta chairs, folk-art panels drawn from handloom and pottery |
| 03 Coast stories | Peach walls, coastal murals, a saffron tile border at the top of the dado |
| 04 Pistachio and coral | Coral and green blocks in the tiles and chairs, a quieter wetland mural |
| 05 Industrial works | Graphite and safety yellow, with line drawings of the plant's own work |

The murals are **"a story across the walls"**: a different chapter between each pair of
openings, with quiet wall areas left clear so the hall does not feel busy. Dining walls
show local life and shared meals; the training floor shows process, product and people.

## Finishes that are easy to build and easy to clean

The specification is deliberately plain, so every option is built from the same
materials:

- **Floor:** grey and green [Kota stone](/materials/kota-stone) in the dry dining areas,
  colour-matched matt porcelain in the wet rooms
- **Walls:** a **300 x 600 mm stock tile** dado, with painted artwork above it. No
  intricate stone inlay, which would be slow to lay and impossible to patch
- **Setting out:** whole rectangular modules, with the final setting-out taken from the
  surveyed room edges, so the cuts land where they are least visible
- **Signage:** one family throughout, in painted metal with replaceable printed inserts,
  bilingual copy proofread before it is made

### Wet rooms

Handwash rooms, toilets and the kitchen get repeatable, cleanable details: waterproofing
turned up at the wall, sealant at every change of plane, a matt floor tile laid to fall
towards the drain, tile borders aligned through corners, a flush transition at each
doorway, and traps and fittings that can be reached and replaced. These are shown as
schematic junctions; the falls, outlets and waterproofing are settled in coordinated
working drawings.

Related: [vitrified tile](/materials/vitrified-tile) ·
[flooring systems](/services/interior-fit-out/flooring-systems) ·
[office signage and wayfinding](/services/interior-fit-out/office-signage-and-wayfinding)

## What to settle before construction drawings

- **The break pattern and the largest sitting** per hall, which confirms the seat split.
- **Kitchen equipment, LPG, drainage and exhaust.** These need specialist coordination
  before the kitchen layout is fixed.
- **Store and small-room dimensions.** Where the source plans conflict, the source room
  boundaries govern until a survey settles them.
- **Training intake size and the products on display**, which set the display rail
  loads and the screen positions.
- **Signage copy**, in both languages, proofread before fabrication.

## Taking it to site

We build canteen and welfare blocks as one package, shell, interiors and services:
[industrial and factory construction](/services/construction/industrial-and-factory-construction) ·
[fit-out MEP coordination](/services/interior-fit-out/fit-out-mep-coordination) ·
[factories and manufacturing](/industries/factories-and-manufacturing)

**Planning a canteen or welfare block for a plant?** Send the site plan, the shift
pattern and the largest sitting. [Talk to the design team](/contact).

## Frequently asked questions

### How do you plan a canteen for 670 people on two floors?

Split the seats so no hall is too large to manage at a shift break, and put a servery against each hall. This plan has a 156-seat and a 194-seat hall on the ground floor, either side of the entrance corridor, and a 320-seat hall above. Each hall has its own servery wall, drop-plate point and dish wash, so a queue never crosses from one hall into another and the upstairs hall does not depend on trays carried up the stair.

### Why put a training centre in a canteen building?

Because the building already has what a training room needs: a large clear floor, toilets, drinking water and a place to eat between sessions. Here the first floor shares the building with a classroom-and-round-table training room and a product gallery. Trainees can break for a meal next door rather than walk across the site, and the training room can seat a full intake without taking space from the plant.

### What should the floor of a factory canteen be?

Hard, matt and easy to wash, and different in dry and wet rooms. This design uses grey and green Kota stone in the dry dining areas, with colour-matched matt porcelain in the handwash rooms, toilets and kitchen. Laying both in whole rectangular modules and setting out from the surveyed room edges avoids slivers of cut tile at the walls, which are what crack and lift first.

### What has to be detailed in canteen wet rooms?

The junctions. Waterproofing turned up at the wall, sealant at every change of plane, a matt floor tile laid to fall towards the drain, a flush transition at the doorway so trolleys do not catch, and traps and fittings that can be reached and replaced. In this concept these are shown as schematic junctions; the actual falls, outlets and waterproofing are settled in coordinated working drawings.

### Why show five finish options on the same plan?

So the choice is about colour and character, not about layout. All five options keep the same halls, servery, kitchen and wet rooms, the same 300 x 600 mm stock wall tile and the same floor approach. What changes is the paint above the dado, the chair colour, the tile banding and the mural theme. That keeps the decision quick and the cost difference between options small.

### Can Hagerstone design and build a canteen building like this?

Yes. Send the site plan, the shift pattern and the largest number eating at one time, plus any welfare rooms the site needs, and we will plan the halls, the kitchen flow and the support rooms together, then build the shell, interiors and services as one package.

---

Source: https://hagerstone.com/our-designs/factory-canteen-design-two-floors-training-centre