Factory kitchen

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1. Factory kitchen in Moscow (built 1927-29)

Factory kitchen ( Russian фабрика-кухня fabrika-kuchnja ) was the name of large catering establishments in the Soviet Union , which were established in several cities in the country, especially in the 1920s and 1930s. Like many other public buildings of that time (such as culture houses ), factory kitchens were buildings of constructivism ; a number of them are now listed.

The way a Soviet factory kitchen worked was comparable to a large canteen . A factory kitchen building typically contained large-sized work rooms in which lunch was prepared in a highly mechanized process (comparable to industrial production, hence the name "factory kitchen"), as well as one or more dining rooms, cold rooms and storage rooms, a cloakroom, a shop (where you could buy semi-finished products as well as ready-made meals to take away) as well as ballrooms and banquet rooms. In some of the mostly three- to four-story buildings, the flat roof was also made into a dining room in the summer months, so that visitors could dine outside in good weather.

The concept of the factory kitchen was primarily aimed at the needs of workers in large cities. Since the industrialization of the Soviet Union was pushed ahead on a large scale in the 1920s and 1930s , it was increasingly impossible for many women to take care of the household's full needs because they worked in factories like their men. At the same time, the old, patriarchal lifestyle was seen as outdated; a propaganda campaign in the 1920s even called for an end to “kitchen slavery” and for the preparation of lunch to be left entirely to the catering trade. In response to this campaign, the first factory kitchen in the then widespread constructivist style was put into operation in the city of Ivanovo-Voznesensk in 1925 . Following the example of this first factory kitchen, similar large-scale catering establishments were soon established across the country, including in Nizhny Novgorod , at the construction site of the Dnjeprostroj power station, in Leningrad and, since 1929, in Moscow . Many factory kitchens were built by the architect Ekaterina Nikolaevna Maximowa .

Factory kitchens were typically built in industrial districts. They not only fulfilled the actual function of a canteen, but also produced finished meals and semi-finished products for smaller factory canteens and for their own factory sales. In terms of production capacity, a factory kitchen was far superior to an ordinary canteen, cafeteria and similar catering establishments. The factory kitchen in the Belarusian capital Minsk, for example, could produce up to 65,000 ready meals per day and employed a total of 478 workers; their dining rooms offered space for over 1000 guests at the same time.

In the late Soviet period, the factory kitchens lost their importance as large-scale operations compared to the pre-war period. Many of the former factory kitchens are now operated as restaurants and catering businesses, with the spacious banquet halls being rented for festive occasions.

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