Commissary Kitchens: How Central Production Serves Restaurants

A commissary kitchen prepares food for other locations. Restaurants then receive those products and complete the remaining work needed to serve customers. The split can cover selected ingredients rather than an entire menu.

For a regional restaurant group, the operating question is where each production step happens and how the product reaches the store. Company filings and a university's account of its central kitchen show several ways that division works, from a few signature ingredients to dough manufacturing and campus bakery production.

Portillo's centralizes signature ingredients#

In its 2025 Form 10-K, filed February 24, 2026, Portillo's reported two food production commissaries in Illinois. They supplied its restaurant network with beef, peppers and gravy for the chain's Italian beef sandwiches. The company said central production supported product consistency and quality.

Distribution is a separate part of that arrangement. Portillo's described a network of independently operated distribution partners under the UniPro cooperative. Its inventory disclosure explained that commissary products pass through distributors before reaching restaurants, with certain products held at distributors on short-term consignment.

Restaurants finish preparing the sandwich ingredients in their own kitchens, according to the filing.

Domino's combines manufacturing and distribution#

A larger network shows how production and delivery can sit within one business segment. Domino's 2025 annual report described 22 regional dough manufacturing and supply chain centers in the United States, alongside two thin-crust manufacturing facilities and a vegetable processing center. It also reported five regional dough manufacturing and supply chain centers in Canada.

The centers make fresh dough while also purchasing, receiving, storing and delivering other products. Domino's reported regularly supplying more than 7,800 stores and leasing more than 1,100 tractors and trailers in its supply chain segment.

This combines two functions: making an ingredient and moving a broader assortment of goods. A delivery from a central facility does not mean every item on the truck was manufactured there. Domino's separately described third-party suppliers for major ingredients, including cheese and meat toppings.

A central kitchen changes the production process#

Illinois State University's October 2019 account of its Culinary Support Center provides a smaller, campus-based example. The center opened that August with cook-chill production, cold preparation, a bakery and a test kitchen. Staff developed recipes, prepared food and delivered products to several dining locations.

Its equipment included three 100-gallon cooking kettles and a smoker capable of preparing 350 pounds of meat at once. Prepared products moved through cooling, storage and transportation. Bakery equipment included a dough proofer and retarder, allowing dough preparation to continue overnight ahead of the morning shift.

The university also described recipe development for the larger batches. Changing from a saucepan to a production kettle required reconsidering ingredient quantities. Centralization brought that recipe development into a shared production setting.

What determines the economics?#

Store count alone does not calculate a commissary's break-even point. A comparison has to include the work remaining in restaurants as well as production labor, ingredients, facility costs, packaging, storage and delivery. Moving a task off a restaurant's payroll also moves its cost somewhere else in the system.

There is no single break-even store count in this comparison. Estimating one requires a particular menu, production schedule, delivery route and cost base. The calculation follows the product through the whole system, from preparation to the kitchen serving the guest.