Every year we track the NRA Show’s speaker lineup, panels, and session topics to get a read on where commercial kitchen design is actually heading. This year’s signal is hard to miss: automation and smart equipment aren’t a future-forward conversation anymore. They’re a coordination problem that’s already on current projects.

I’ve been watching this shift build for a few cycles now. What’s different in 2026 isn’t the technology itself. It’s the pace. Equipment that needed a custom integration conversation two years ago is showing up in standard spec books. The questions I’m hearing from architects on active projects have changed from “should we consider this?” to “how do we coordinate it?”

That’s a meaningful shift. Worth talking through what it actually means for the design process.

It’s Not Just About the Equipment Anymore

The first wave of kitchen automation was mostly about individual pieces of equipment. Combi ovens with programmable cycles. Dishwashers with automated chemical dosing. Ventilation systems with demand-controlled exhaust. Those are still relevant.

But what’s happening now goes further. Automated equipment increasingly wants to communicate, with other equipment, with building management systems, with operational software. That means the coordination problem isn’t just about utility rough-ins and clearances. It’s about data infrastructure.

A kitchen spec’ing connected equipment in 2026 needs network access points positioned for equipment locations, not just for the dining room. It needs MEP coordination that accounts for equipment communicating load data to the building management system. And it needs the owner and any technology consultants in the conversation before schematic design is complete.

That’s a different coordination conversation than we were having a few years ago.

Smart Equipment Changes the Infrastructure Requirements

Traditional commercial kitchen equipment has fairly predictable infrastructure needs. Gas loads, electrical circuits, exhaust volumes, drainage connections. Well understood, well documented.

Smart equipment adds layers. Sensors need power and network connections. Control panels need clear sightlines and accessible positions. Equipment that self-monitors for maintenance needs a way to communicate that information, whether to an app, a building system, or a service dashboard.

None of that is complicated. But none of it shows up on the standard coordination checklist either. Equipment schedules need to reflect connected equipment requirements, not just utility connections. The foodservice consultant should be flagging those requirements early enough for electrical and low-voltage coordination to catch them in design development, not during installation.

Ventilation Is Getting Smarter Too

Demand-controlled kitchen ventilation has been available for years. Adoption was slower than the technology warranted, partly because early systems required careful commissioning and partly because the first-cost premium was hard to justify in tighter budgets.

Both of those barriers have come down. The commissioning process is better understood, and the lifecycle cost argument for demand-controlled ventilation is clearer now that energy costs have stayed elevated.

What that means for kitchen design is that the ventilation system conversation now includes a controls conversation. What sensors are driving the exhaust rate? Where are they positioned relative to the cooking equipment? How does the system respond to different cooking loads across the day? Those questions need to be worked through by the mechanical engineer and the foodservice consultant together, before the mechanical design is finalized.

The Labor Market Is What’s Actually Driving This

It’s worth being direct about what’s accelerating adoption. It isn’t primarily that the technology got better, though it did. It’s that labor costs made automation economically necessary for operators who weren’t in that conversation before.

Kitchens that couldn’t justify automated cooking equipment at one labor cost can justify it now. That means architects who weren’t designing for automated equipment workflows are designing for them now. And the layout implications are real.

Automated cooking equipment doesn’t always fit the same footprint assumptions as what it’s replacing. Some units are larger. Some require different clearances for automated loading. Some change the workflow sequence in ways that affect adjacent station placement.

If the operator’s equipment decisions are being driven by automation considerations, that has to be in the programming conversation. Not discovered during design development.

What I’m Watching in the Show Coverage

The panels and sessions I’ve been tracking at this year’s NRA Show point to a few areas worth paying attention to from a design coordination standpoint.

How manufacturers are presenting equipment connectivity tells you something about how they expect it to be coordinated in the field. The mechanical and controls conversations are converging. And the operator-facing content is pretty clear about what problems they’re trying to solve with automation, which tells you what design constraints the next round of projects will carry.

The Coordination Process Hasn’t Caught Up

Here’s what I keep running into: the equipment is moving faster than the coordination standards.

Manufacturers are shipping connected equipment. Operators are specifying it. But the questions the design team asks, the documents they produce, and the milestones they set haven’t fully caught up with what connected equipment actually requires.

That’s the gap worth closing. Not by waiting for the industry to standardize, but by asking the right questions on the current project. What connected equipment is the operator planning to specify? What infrastructure does it need that isn’t on the standard rough-in list? What building systems does it need to talk to?

Those questions have answers. They just need to be asked early enough for the answers to affect the design.

I’m curious what others are seeing. If you’ve worked through connected equipment coordination on a recent project, or if you’re tracking anything from the NRA Show coverage that’s changed how you’re thinking about kitchen design, I’d love to hear it in the comments.