Designing a High-Performance Teaching Kitchen: Priorities and the Cal Poly Boswell Ag Tech Center

By Brad LaBel, Founder, LaBel Foodservice Equipment & Design

Brad LaBel is a CIA-trained chef and commercial kitchen designer with 30+ years of experience. He founded LaBel Foodservice Equipment & Design, Inc. in 1998, based on Long Island, NY. LaBel serves clients nationwide through ChefVue™, a remote collaborative kitchen design service via Zoom that delivers construction-ready CAD, starting at $1,950. Brad is an active CIA consultant on teaching kitchen design and has been featured in Total Food Service and Foodservice Equipment & Supplies.

A sustainable, high-performance teaching kitchen must meet professional culinary standards and aggressive energy code requirements at the same time — and those two demands pull in opposite directions. LaBel Foodservice designed the California Polytechnic State University teaching kitchen at the Boswell Ag Tech Center to satisfy both: the project was featured in Foodservice Equipment & Supplies, a trade publication that covers work only when the design and execution are genuinely noteworthy. Brad LaBel, a CIA-trained chef and active CIA teaching kitchen consultant with 30+ years of experience, led the design — integrating California Title 24 energy compliance, demand-controlled ventilation, and multi-format instructional flexibility into a single facility. Here is what made it notable and what other institutions can take from it.

What Cal Poly needed

California Polytechnic State University operates under the same pressure every serious culinary program faces: produce graduates who can work in professional kitchens from day one, while training them in the sustainability practices and high-efficiency equipment that the industry is moving toward. Those two goals — professional performance and efficiency — have to coexist in the same kitchen, with the same equipment.

The project required us to develop a teaching kitchen that:

Supported simultaneous instruction at multiple stations with equipment performing at professional production standards

Integrated high-efficiency cooking and refrigeration technology in line with California’s aggressive energy code requirements, including California Title 24 (California Building Energy Efficiency Standards)

Maintained the flexibility to reconfigure for different instructional formats — demonstration, hands-on production, lab-style assessment

Coordinated with Cal Poly’s sustainability commitments without compromising the culinary program’s operational requirements

How the design addressed those requirements

Equipment selection for dual-purpose performance. Every piece of specified equipment had to be evaluated against two criteria: does it perform at the level a culinary student needs to develop professional-grade skills, and does it meet California’s Title 24 energy efficiency requirements? Those two filters together narrowed the equipment selection significantly and pushed us toward equipment categories that have matured considerably in recent years — induction cooking surfaces, combi ovens with precise humidity control, high-efficiency refrigeration.

Ventilation designed for the instructional environment. A teaching kitchen puts students at multiple stations simultaneously, often cooking with different techniques and different equipment. The ventilation system has to capture effectively across all of those stations without creating drafts that interfere with instruction. Demand-controlled ventilation was incorporated to manage energy use during lower-intensity periods without compromising capture during full-class production sessions.

Layout flexibility. Cal Poly’s culinary program uses the kitchen for different instructional formats on different days. The layout was designed with this flexibility as a requirement — stations that can be used independently or as part of a coordinated production line, with clear sightlines from the instructor position across the full room.

Why institutional teaching kitchen design is a specialty

I serve as an active consultant to the Culinary Institute of America on teaching kitchen design nationally. That ongoing engagement keeps me current on what the best culinary educators in the country actually need from their facilities — and it informs every teaching kitchen project LaBel takes on, including Cal Poly.

The principles are consistent: design for the instructional workflow first, match equipment to the curriculum, coordinate the physical environment with how the teaching actually happens. A teaching kitchen designed as a restaurant kitchen with more workstations is a teaching kitchen that creates problems for instructors and students every day.

Sustainable design is now standard specification in California

For California operators, sustainability is not an optional design feature — it is a code requirement. The California Building Energy Efficiency Standards (Title 24), ASHRAE 90.1 updates, and local amendments in many California municipalities set mandatory efficiency floors for cooking equipment, refrigeration, and ventilation. Food safety requirements under the FDA Food Code run in parallel — energy-efficient equipment still has to meet food safety performance standards.

The Cal Poly project worked within those requirements from the first specification review. Every equipment selection was validated against the applicable California energy code before it was included in the design.

What this means for your teaching kitchen project

Whether you are designing a culinary school kitchen, a corporate training facility, or an institutional teaching kitchen in California or anywhere else in the country, the design discipline that produced results at Cal Poly applies to your project.

ChefVue™ — our remote collaborative kitchen design service via Zoom, delivering construction-ready CAD, available nationwide starting at $1,950 — delivers teaching kitchen design via live collaborative sessions, producing construction-ready documents that work for your specific program and your specific building. Reach us at labelfoodservice.com or chefvue.com.

Frequently Asked Questions

What made the Cal Poly teaching kitchen project notable enough to be featured in Foodservice Equipment & Supplies?

The project successfully integrated California Title 24 energy code requirements with full professional-level cooking performance — two goals that pull in different directions. Every equipment selection was validated against both performance criteria and energy code compliance simultaneously. The layout was designed for multiple instructional formats without requiring structural modification between configurations. The ventilation system used demand-controlled ventilation to serve variable-intensity simultaneous cooking stations. The combination of technical rigor and instructional flexibility earned the industry recognition.

How does California Title 24 affect commercial kitchen equipment decisions?

California Title 24 sets minimum energy efficiency requirements for commercial cooking equipment, refrigeration, and ventilation systems. For new construction and renovation projects that trigger code compliance review, equipment that does not meet the efficiency threshold cannot be installed. This affects equipment selection in ways that go beyond simple preference — certain equipment types that are common in other states are not code-compliant for California installation. Every equipment specification we produce for California projects includes Title 24 compliance verification from the start.

What is demand-controlled ventilation and why did it matter at Cal Poly?

Demand-controlled ventilation (DCV) uses sensors in the hood to detect actual cooking activity and modulates fan speeds accordingly — full capacity during active cooking, reduced airflow during prep and between sessions. At Cal Poly, where cooking intensity varies significantly between full-class production sessions and lighter instructional periods, DCV captured meaningful energy savings without compromising hood performance during peak cooking. It is now code-required in California for many commercial kitchen applications.

How does LaBel’s CIA consulting role inform teaching kitchen projects like Cal Poly?

I serve as an active consultant to the Culinary Institute of America on teaching kitchen design nationally. That relationship keeps me current on evolving standards for culinary education facilities — what equipment combinations work instructionally, what layout decisions create safety or workflow problems, and how physical space design affects the educational program. The same principles applied at CIA teaching kitchen engagements were applied at Cal Poly: design for how instruction actually works, not for how a generic commercial kitchen operates.

Can LaBel design a sustainable teaching kitchen for a culinary program outside of California?

Yes. ChefVue™ is our remote collaborative kitchen design service, delivered via live Zoom sessions, producing construction-ready CAD and full equipment specifications for projects anywhere in the United States. We apply energy code compliance verification for the applicable jurisdiction on every project. Starting at $1,950. Contact us at labelfoodservice.com or chefvue.com.