01The pass: heat, reach and a flat place to put a plate
The pass is where a hot plate is set down a hundred times a service, on the same spot, and where a server reaches across without looking.
- Support, not thickness — a dished spot under a heat source is a support problem. A top welded to its brackets, with a cross member under the hot zone, stays flat; a thicker top over a void does not.
- Depth from both sides — 600 mm of kitchen-side working depth plus a front-of-house landing. Under about 700 mm total, servers put plates on the pass edge and things fall.
- Heat lamp clearance — a lamp 300 mm above a 304 top is fine; a lamp 150 mm above it will discolour the grain over a year, which is cosmetic and permanent.
- No front lip — a folded front edge on a pass is a trip hazard for a tray.
02The front counter: elbow height, not work height
The front counter is the opposite problem. Its height is set by the customer standing at it, not by the staff working behind it, and the two numbers are not the same.
| Use | Height | Why that number |
|---|---|---|
| Standard worktop | 900 mm | Working height for a standing adult |
| Pass, kitchen side | 900 mm | Same as worktop, near side |
| Pass, service side | 900–950 mm | Tray landing; rarely higher |
| Front counter, standing guest | 1050–1100 mm | Elbow height at a counter |
| Front counter, seated guest | 750 mm | Table height; 1050 for the bar top above it |
| Accessible section | 750–850 mm | Knee clearance below, 700 mm minimum |
The accessible section is not optional in most jurisdictions and it is cheapest to build into the run rather than to retrofit. It needs a knee recess, no undershelf in that bay, and a wrapped insulation on any hot pipe that passes through it.
03Service flow, drawn as a path
The counter is not a piece of furniture, it is a piece of the service route. A counter that interrupts the route gets modified within a month, usually with a saw.
Where the two cannot be separated by length, they can be separated by height: a lower landing at the pick-up end reads as a different station without any signage.
04Grade and finish on a visible counter
Front-of-house is where a mirror polish gets requested and where it is usually a mistake. A mirror top shows every fingerprint and every wiped patch, and a busy restaurant will be wiping it two hundred times a day.
Grade is decided by the back of house, not the front. If the wash zone is 316L the front counter can stay 304, because nothing chlorinated touches it. The exception is a bar counter with a wet zone — that is a wash zone wearing a front-of-house finish.
We quote the two counters with their grades separated for exactly this reason: our front counter comes back at 304 and our pass comes back at 304, but our bar top comes back at 316L, and a buyer who sees one number cannot tell which grade is doing the work. We also flag any run where the front counter length exceeds 2400 mm, because that is where our packing changes and where a joint has to be designed rather than discovered.
05Ordering both counters together
Send a plan with the pass and the front counter marked, the heights you want on each side, and how the customer route runs. We will quote them as two units, because they are two specifications that happen to meet.
All in 304 as standard, 316L where the surface is wet or chlorinated; 5–6 mm solid plate for a pass, 1.2 mm skin over a frame for a front counter run that is being clad to a carcass. Lead time is 15 working days from a confirmed drawing, and each unit ships with an inspection sheet recording dimensions, joint type and grade, which is what the written warranty refers to.
Commercial stainless steel countertops · Bar counters and the wet zone · Zoning a commercial kitchen · Send a drawing for quotation