When US supermarket chain Vallarta commissioned a new corporate HQ, the company’s leaders insisted on the inclusion of an on-site test kitchen to bring food right to the heart of the operation. So it was that FCSI Associate Jeremy Carver, principal at Ricca Design Studios, received a call to get to work on the test kitchen – a 965-square-foot area for developing in-house products and recipes.
He was first introduced to the project in 2022 and in 2023 Carver headed up a two-month design process. Having arrived at sign off, construction took place in mid- 2024 and completion was reached two months later. Vallarta, with 55 stores dotted across California, now has an HQ with multi-use elements fit for the next few decades.
The changing nature of the supermarket sector demanded Ricca focus on delivering a facility with built-in flexibility for the long term. “We knew we’d would be looking at new equipment pieces or new menu items, so we developed a space where we had the hotline with a UDS system,” Carver explains.
“So, we’re able to swap in pieces and have an environment suitable for testing. When a supplier wants to come in to one of the stores, they can just bring the product right into the test kitchen and see if it aligns,” he adds. “This allowed us to design at the same time and have that overview while getting good feedback from the client.”
Central to the vision was the desire to build flexibility into the design. “Any time I design something, I try not to make a one-trick pony,” Carver says, using the example of the combi oven, a multi-faceted tool.
“When we looked at this space, we asked ourselves, ‘Are we only going to test, or can we take the opportunity to offer some meal opportunities to help support the staff on site?’ So, we helped open the eyes of the client in that regard. And we had to keep asking ourselves, ‘Can we do a bit more with this space?’”
Taking the lead
That ethos led Ricca to develop a training area within the test kitchen to allow Vallarta to bring in offsite staff from stores and use a small training facility to test out a range of equipment and menu items to be served out of store cafes. Doing that, says Carver, fits with the drive towards creating a multifunctional space that should deliver much more value in the long term.
Seeing that vision through on a project with many other aspects – the Vallarta HQ build also features 78 offices; 166 workstations, collaboration and focus spaces; eight conference rooms; six focus booths; and a variety of open lounge spaces and communal gathering tables throughout the space – demanded a laser-like focus on delivering on the foodservice brief no matter what the pressures were.
“This is something I learned from working with various industry leaders: as foodservice consultants, we need to take a lead. And I find a lot of us take a step back, and by doing so we’re not the best advocate for our foodservice professionals or those operating that environment,” he says.
“So, when we got into discussions with mechanical engineers, for instance, who might try to push and pull on us a bit we stood firm: here are the core guiding principles for this project, so we need to
find a way.”
Whether that centred around the decision to go all electric or the need to meet a certain volume of meals delivered per day, Carver and his team were determined to maintain the primacy of good foodservice practice no matter what the technical or engineering challenges facing the project were.
“Being a driving force was so important. I think every project builds upon itself; so with every design we do it’s a collection of our experience that we can bring together to help the client be even more successful, because that’s a value we bring as consultants.”
Christian Doherty
