KaTom Helps Deliver Next-Generation Kitchen to Wellstar Kennestone
After serving Wellstar Kennestone Hospital in Marietta, Ga., for more than 50 years, the centralized kitchen in the green tower needed an upgrade. Even so, building a standalone kitchen in one of the country's largest hospitals simply wasn't a practical addition until plans for a new tower began to surface.
The nine-story yellow tower, which opened in the spring of 2026, gave the hospital's Nutrition & Food Services department an opportunity to create a modern kitchen that completely overhauls how the hospital serves its patients, visitors, and staff.
The new 23,000-square-foot kitchen, which is complemented by a 19,000-square-foot bistro on the floor above, required more than $11 million worth of equipment provided and installed by KaTom Restaurant Supply over the course of a seven-year build.
"This just shows a breadth of skill", Wellstar Health Director of Nutrition & Food Services Ben Behimer told KaTom. "When you have a project like this, KaTom had their points of contact, but there's just a lot of people with their hands in the pot. [KaTom's] ability to be a part of that team, and to take direction from a number of different people, then to be able to go interface with the mom-and-pop shop is a good skill to have."
A Growing Campus Requires a Modern Kitchen
The green tower kitchen was built in the early 1970s and served the needs of the hospital well for many years. But as Kennestone, and healthcare foodservice in general, began to grow and evolve, the kitchen started to show its age.
Part of this can be attributed to a shift in hospital experience. Over the last 15 years, priorities have shifted from focusing on mortality rates and similar metrics to a more comprehensive view of patient experience.
While the importance of these metrics hasn't changed, there's a renewed push to ensure patients enjoy their experience as much as possible given the circumstances. This starts with a hot meal of their choosing on their own time.
"Not that long ago, there was no such thing as patient experience," Behimer said. "That term didn't exist. When I started here 15 years ago out of the fine dining world, it was very shocking to me that we were doing foodservice, but there was no sense of hospitality. So it's been a long journey to have hospitality infused into the hospital, and that's very important. Because when you know that you can be a high point of a patient's day, that also improves staff pride."
That patient experience starts with an innovative idea designed to help a hospital stay feel more like a hotel stay. New kitchen technology enables Kennestone to offer room service. Patients can select a meal from a restaurant-style menu and use their phone to ring the call center located in the new build.
In the call center, a call-center associate registers orders and sends them to the cookline, where they are prepared, cooked, and plated by the kitchen staff, then loaded into a delivery cart and sent to patients within 45 minutes. This system also gives the kitchen ready access to patient dietary information to ensure alignment with physician and dietitian orders.
Kennestone will be able to deliver 800 patient meals per meal period and anticipates serving 3,000 patient meals per day. While many hospitals offer room service, it's usually limited to certain hospital segments, such as the delivery wing. At Kennestone, room service extends to almost all patients, with a couple exceptions in procedural areas and the emergency department.
"We aimed very, very high in patient experience," Behimer said. "Because of that, we have a lot of labor, and that's costly. Any business's biggest expense is labor, and this was an intentional decision by Wellstar and by Kennestone's administration to support a very robust labor model, because that's how important patient experience is.
"There was an intentional decision to say, 'yes, we are going to take on that cost because that's how important our patients are and that's how important patient experience is."
Installation Execution
Kennestone's equipment supplier bidding process started with a presentation held just down the road from the hospital, and while many suitors bid, KaTom had a built-in advantage: an in-house installation team led by Nick Northern.
While many companies procure equipment and simply drop it off in the loading bay, KaTom offers personalized installation to help guarantee equipment is delivered, set up correctly, and running smoothly.
"The install team came to the presentation, and that's one of the reasons KaTom won the job was the confidence of the install team," Behimer said.
"We've done other smaller kitchen projects for Wellstar where the equipment vendor brings in all the equipment on a box truck on like a Thursday morning, then by Thursday evening, you're done. They've unloaded an oven or a stove, like a few cases of smallwares and stuff like that. This was a years-long installation."
Installation started with the myriad of required hoods and the walk-in coolers and freezers. The kitchen required receiving walk-ins, day-of-use walk-ins, and a walk-in prep room—one of the more unique pieces in the build. Because of the walk-ins' location on a main hallway, they were outfitted with automated sliding barn doors rather than traditional hinged doors.
To keep food out of the temperature danger zone, the walk-in prep room enables workers to assemble cold dishes and prep cold ingredients in a large refrigerated space.
The walk-in prep room is kept warmer than a typical walk-in cooler — usually around 45 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to 36-37 degrees — but the design still keeps cold foods out of the danger zone (41 to 135 degrees Fahrenheit) for long periods. This is key in any foodservice concept, but it's even more important in healthcare settings.
"If you're making potato salad or something, it's much safer to do that," Behimer said. "And at Kennestone, we're not making a bowl of potato salad; we're making 30 gallons of potato salad. So that's what that room is for."
KaTom's design team also pitched in on the effort. KaTom helped redesign the pump room and redesign the rack setup to help hold condensers.
The serving line, however, was one of the most important design contributions from KaTom. KaTom helped reimagine this area to simplify the connection points, resulting in just five load centers being needed.
To help the process go as smoothly as possible, KaTom's project manager Lance Rose was on-site full time. He wanted to make sure Kennestone got the attention that a project of this magnitude deserved, so he was there to quickly radio back to KaTom to get added manpower or equipment down to the facility when needed.
It's a big project," Rose said. "There's a lot of equipment, and there's not easy access to get to. The loading dock is small, so we had to come long distances. There were just a lot of late hours. Nothing was easy with it with trying to get all the packaging out of boxes, and carts, and crates. It was just a great big project."
A High-Quality Emphasis
After the initial installation, it was time to tackle the bulk of the kitchen, which is outfitted with two identical cooklines to accommodate room service for the patient volume at Kennestone. While this setup doubles volume, it's also practical: if a piece of equipment goes down on one line, it won't shut down the kitchen.
When selecting pieces, the Wellstar team focused on high-quality, durable equipment that can hold up to the stress of an institutional kitchen that operates 24/7 365 days a year. Traulsen products comprise the short-term refrigeration, while the ranges are Montague. Both of those are high-end brands known for their reliability and longevity.
A pair of tilt skillets enable batch cooking, and the kitchen is also outfitted with an expansive cook-chill system that helps staff easily prepare recipes in house vs purchasing. Steam kettles ranging in size from 40 to 100 gallons line the wall, with piping close by to quickly pump food such as mashed potatoes, soups, and sauces into pouches.
These are then transferred to a CapKold waterjet cook-chill tank where they're rapidly cooled to proper holding temps. Recipes are then rethermalized in the water bath or otherwise finished as needed before being served to the patient.
These bags are then transferred to a blast chiller where they're rapidly brought through the danger zone to proper holding temps. They're then rethermalized in the water bath as needed and served to the patient.
"I think the central tenets were durability, reliability, safety for staff, cleanability, and then aesthetics", Behimer said. "People don't know it, and they might not admit it, but you're more inclined to take care of stuff that looks good and is of high quality. We may not even know it, but if we walked into that kitchen and we had bought all of the bargain equipment, it would feel different."
Cleaning and sanitation are vitally important in healthcare settings, a fact reflected in the kitchen's dishroom. A top of the line flight-type dishwasher handles the high volume of patient ware Kennestone must turn over. Four high-capacity pot scrubbers and two turbo wash pot sinks handle grease-laden cook ware. Fans located above the drying and storage areas aid in rapid drying to prevent wet-nesting of dishes in storage, a health department emphasis.
The most notable cleaning piece is the cart sanitization machine located in the center of the room. Built and installed by a third party, this roll-in machine cleans delivery carts returned from service, spraying and sanitizing the carts before they're put back in the rotation.
In addition to the health requirements involved with cooking the food, hospitals must navigate regulations and safety considerations that other foodservice operations do not.
"There was a lot of coordination, and a lot of details had to be right in terms of form and function," Behimer said. "The equipment can't just look good, but it has to be durable and work for a long period of time. I always joke that our staff is going to pressure test everything. If it can be broken, we'll find a way to break it. So it was a project for KaTom with the install, for sure."
From Patient Care to Public-Facing Dining
One floor up from the patient kitchen is Kennestone's new bistro. This 19,000-square-foot dining area is made up of eight microconcepts offering everything from morning coffee to international specialties to fresh-baked pizza. The previous retail space in the hospital was outfitted with a traditional cafeteria and a single restaurant, so the new space greatly increases customer options.
Designed to feed both visitors and staff, the new bistro will serve as many as 10,000 meals per day.
Though Kennestone strives to ensure a premier visitor experience, the hospital staff was also a key consideration when constructing the new dining room. Even with the existing foodservice concepts in the surrounding area, the sheer size of the hospital makes it impractical for employees to leave campus for their meal breaks.
The bistro is in a main thoroughfare in the hospital, just off the main entrance. This prime location creates the opportunity to highlight the capabilities of each concept by showing off the equipment selection.
"Even if you're having a great day, a great day at Kennestone is still a very busy day," Behimer said. "It's a busy hospital with high demand and high pressure. Everybody here does important work. Even if you're not at the bedside, you're supporting those who do work at the bedside. So we want to provide them a respite and a place they can enjoy their lunch. I think we've accomplished that."
Behimer is aware of the negative stereotypes that plague hospital cafeterias: bland food, limited variety, fluorescent lighting, and institutional decor. The new bistro is designed to challenge those preconceptions.
This starts with visual elements. The coffee shop, located just outside of the main dining room where the bulk of the bistro is housed, is outfitted with two premier La Marzocco red-colored espresso machines filled with Dancing Goats Coffee, which is an Atlanta staple.
Inside the bistro, the pizza space is built around a copper-domed Marra Forni pizza oven that can put out house-made pies in as little as 90 seconds. The international microconcept features a custom Hestan Suite outfitted with three wok stations in clear view of customers.
A Wood Stone rotisserie located right next to the counter gives the feeling of being in a premier foodservice concept, helping to provide rest and respite to staff and visitors.
Even something as simple as trash collection was taken into consideration. Rather than an open trash collection design that requires pulling bags in the middle of the dining room, the trash cans are built into the wall, enabling staff to collect the bags from the rear and out of sight.
The bistro's overall goal was to offer something for everybody. Besides pizza and international cuisine, the area features a smoothie station, a large salad bar, a grill and deli, and a grab-and-go "market".
"We focused on variety to hit kind of every age group,"Jackie Durland, Assistant Director of Nutrition and Food Services said. "We have the younger folks, and we have those who are older. We have the must-haves of what everybody wants, but this is also a hospital setting. We needed to make sure we had enough to make healthy meals. Then, people want their burgers and fries, too. So, each concept was designed based on the variety of menus that we needed to be able to provide."
To streamline the order process and limit wait times, kiosks for customer ordering are set up outside each station. To further simplify the process, an app is in development that will allow visitors or staff to order a meal on their phone and pick it up at their convenience.
In addition to expedited service, this technology allows Behimer and his team to access critical data to assess the customer experience and improving various processes. Important data points include ticket wait times, order frequency and timing, and information regarding peak sale times for specific items.
Bright display screens are mounted at every station to clearly outline every available option and to enable staff to quickly relay changes in menu or availability to customers.
"Jackie can get the data that's coming out of that technology that's telling us what our ticket times are, so we can really kind of hone in where there's opportunities for improvement," Behimer said. "We've taken some big steps forward in terms of technology utilization for the project."
Delivering on the Vision
For KaTom, the project underscored the importance of clarity in scope and long-term thinking. When equipment meets utility, someone is responsible for every detail. Establishing responsibility early prevents later confusion. On a project of this scale, proactive communication is as important as the equipment itself.
By the final phases of installation, the project team had developed a rhythm. Coordination meetings were tight, responsibilities were clear, and sequencing was refined, reflecting the patience, adaptability, and shared commitment to accuracy that large-scale healthcare projects require.
"There is no such thing as overplanning," Behimer said. "There is just such a tremendous level of detail. By the end of the project, we got into a really good rhythm. The truth is that for whoever took on this project, it was going to be a beast. It was a massive undertaking for any equipment vendor. The dynamic between it being a massive kitchen in a hospital with a very particular foodservice leader, it was a tough job."
Part of that rhythm came from the cohesiveness of the KaTom team. Everyone from Design + Build President Charley Bible to department director Mike Rudd to Northern were on the same page with the single goal of making sure Kennestone got everything it needed in a timely manner.
The install team worked late hours and lugged heavy equipment long distances through hospital hallways, while also balancing the array of other jobs KaTom was working on at the same time around the country.
"Our leaders have just hired some really good people," Rose said. "Our install team just has some top-notch guys. They know what to do, and you don't have to sit there and babysit them. The bulk of this was just our team, and this stuff was heavy. It's not like we were just moving a blender or a mixer. Most of it wasn't on wheels. They were just picking it up or toting it on pallet jacks. None of it was easy."
Beyond the initial installation, Kennestone is eyeing a long-term partnership with KaTom. Located just three hours away in Kodak, Tenn., KaTom is relatively local and already familiar with the hospital.
As Kennestone continues to evolve its foodservice capabilities, KaTom is ready to help expand the possibilities of Kennestone kitchens.
"KaTom was a good partner," Behimer said. "That was one consideration for me when we were evaluating bidders, was the ability to have a longer-term relationship. To me, I like to do business with people we'll be able to have a longer-term relationship with. This wasn't just a one-and-done thing. The idea was to do this project and set ourselves up for the future."
