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AIA Webinars

Looking for AIA Learning Unit Credits? Ricca can help! We're currently offering five AIA accredited webinar sessions to take at the comfort of your desk. Read below to see the variety of topics we have available. If there's something specific you want to learn about foodservice that isn't available, let us know! Please send an email to lmueller@ricca.com if you are interested in scheduling an AIA session.

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Foodservice 101 (1 LU)

Course Description:

Commercial kitchens are typically the most expensive spaces in a building ad require vastly different equipment, infrastructure, and finish requirements. Foodservice 101 is designed to introduce you to the basics of planning and designing foodservice spaces. We will start with general programming and efficient workflows of kitchen spaces. Then we will get into the specifics regarding various categories of equipment, critical adjacencies, code requirements, and health department guidelines -- all while using industry terminology. Lastly, we will finish with some typical miss-steps in design to bring home the concept of proper planning and design for foodservice spaces.

Learning Objectives:

  • Identify the components of a commercial kitchen and the importance of proper sizing of spaces.

  • Learn why critical adjacencies and proper flow are key to the efficiency of a commercial kitchen

  • Identify categories of equipment and the infrastructure required to operate them

  • Understood the codes and health department guidelines that influence layout and design

  • Add some terminology to your verbal repertoire for your next conversation with a chef

Net Zero Kitchens (1 LU)

Course Description:

Restaurants are complicated and misunderstood building types that can cause frustration when attempting a zero net energy building. This intermediate session will focus on strategies that design teams can use to achieve low energy use intensity in a commercial kitchen as well as restaurant design that encourages behavior change, supports sustainable operations, and promotes health and wellness programs.

Learning Objectives:

  • Analyze kitchen and restaurant design to optimize energy and water efficiency

  • Understand typical kitchen equipment specified and potential hurdles with an all-electric restaurant

  • Summarize key requirements specific to indoor air quality control, food safety, lighting quality, staff comfort factors, and nourishment associated with the WELL rating system

  • Discuss and identify options for food recovery and reducing waste to landfill for a commercial kitchen

COVID-19 Pandemic: Effects on Foodservice (1 LU or 1 HSW)

Course Description:

COVID-19 has affected restaurants and dining facilities in an unprecedented way, resulting in many permanent changes to the dining experience and operations. In this course, we will examine the effects and strategies utilized to protect food, guests and employees from virus transmission. Additionally, we will discuss the potential long-term and short-term impacts on foodservice design, including myths about sanitation and warewashing effectiveness.

Learning Objectives:

  • Define the effects that COVID-19 is having on food, guest, and employee safety

  • Highlight strategies that foodservice operators are utilizing to continue to safely serve their patrons

  • Understand the long-term and short-term impacts on various dining facilities

  • Debunk myths surrounding sanitation and warewashing against COVID-19

Ghost Kitchens and Pick-Up/ Delivery (1 LU)

Course Description:

With popularity increasing in mobile ordering and an incentive to operate with low overhead expenses, young “start-up” companies as well-established operators are opting to lease small kitchen spaces that are collocated in a large, communal foodservice facility. These facilities are designed to be flexible and with short-term lease agreements. Ghost Kitchens mutually benefit both tenant and landlord by reducing up-front capital costs and keeping future infrastructure adjustments to a minimum.

Learning Objectives:

  • Bring awareness of this rising trend in the industry

  • Educate architects on the benefits and potential pitfalls of this approach. Discuss considerations such as labor, start-up costs, and flexibility of infrastructure

  • Discuss the fundamentals of a “successful” ghost kitchen. Discuss the “vanilla box” concept

  • Discuss the industry trend towards delivery/pick-up, the ways this has been exacerbated in 2020, and the ways we see this growing/evolving moving forward

Appropriate Applications of Ventless & Induction Cooking (1 LU)

Course Description:

Some of the most challenging types of projects are renovations of existing spaces that have archaic, complicated architectural and structural design. This can have the adverse affect of limiting the quality or scale of food offering in a new venue coming into the renovated space. Ventless and induction cooking have given operators the ability to be creative and flexible in any space. In this course we will discuss the ways in which ventless and induction cooking can open doors for restauranteurs and operators that previously were thought to be closed.

Learning Objectives:

  • Discuss the fundamentals of induction and ventless technology

  • Prove through example the ways in which ventless technology can create an opportunity where one was otherwise thought not to exist

  • Discuss cost differential and potential trade-offs between typical and induction equipment

  • Demonstrate the versatility of these technologies by way of discussing the many different ways the equipment can be utilized

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