A hospitality fit-out is one of the most demanding commercial electrical scopes in the trade. Three-phase oven runs in a kitchen the size of a single-car garage. A cookline interlock with the mechanical contractor's exhaust system. RCDs on every wet-zone GPO. Phase-loss protection on coolrooms whose contents would write off the week's takings if a compressor died at 3am. Dimming for service areas that needs to look right at 7am breakfast and 9pm dinner without rebooting. And the whole thing has to be installed without disrupting trade, in a kitchen where the chef will be on Monday whether the electrical is finished or not. Millar Electrics services hospitality electrical across Melbourne's eastern suburbs — new fit-outs, refits, cookline extensions, and the call-outs nobody else picks up on a Saturday night.
Three-phase the right way
Most hospitality kitchens above sandwich-bar size need three-phase. Combi ovens, deck ovens, dishwashers, gelato machines, and any coffee machine above two-group are typically three-phase loads. We size the supply for the equipment list — pulling the nameplate data from each piece of kit and running a maximum-demand calc rather than guessing. Where the existing supply is single-phase only, the upgrade is coordinated with the distributor before the rest of the fit-out starts. The board carries discrimination between three-phase MCBs and the single-phase RCBOs feeding bench and lighting circuits so a single nuisance trip doesn't take the whole kitchen.
Cookline interlock and EHO compliance
Every commercial cookline in Victoria needs an interlock with the kitchen exhaust hood per AS 1668.2 — the cookline can't be energised when the hood isn't running. We coordinate with the mechanical contractor on the hood and canopy, install the interlock contactor on the electrical side, and verify the interlock with the EHO inspector if needed. The same fit-out check covers wet-zone RCDs, no permanent extension leads, no daisy-chained GPOs at the coffee bench, and adequate emergency lighting in the kitchen and back-of-house — the items the council EHO inspection will check before granting the food-business permit.
Service-area lighting and dimming
Front-of-house lighting in a hospitality venue has to do two jobs — the bright, neutral-temperature daytime mode that suits brunch service, and the warmer, dimmed evening mode that flatters food and faces. We run the front-of-house lighting on dimmable circuits — phase-cut for retrofit-friendly LED tracks, DALI for new fit-outs where the venue wants programmed scenes — and pair the controls to the venue's day-mode / evening-mode rhythm. Pendant fittings, downlights, decorative wall washes, bar uplighting, and exterior shop-front signage all get programmed into the same controller.
Working around trading hours
For a refit, board upgrade, or cookline extension we plan the outage into a non-trading window — typically a Sunday closure for cafes, Monday daytime for restaurants closed Mondays, after-hours weeknights for bars. The plan goes to the venue manager in writing, with a clear start and end time and the energisation test plan attached. Where trading and outage have to overlap (rare, but it happens for partial-board work) we section-isolate so the front bar can keep pouring while the kitchen is down for an hour. After-hours and weekend rates are line-itemed transparently — the price is the price whether it's noon Tuesday or 2am Sunday.