5 Modern Ways to Use a Butler’s Pantry in Your Home

Should you add a butler’s pantry to your kitchen remodel? You may wonder why you’d need a butler’s pantry when you don’t have a butler, but these classic spaces can be problem-solvers for modern homeowners. How could you use a butler’s pantry in your home? Here are five ideas.

1. Entertainment Staging

The most traditional use of a butler’s pantry was as a staging area for food coming from the kitchen and being served to guests in the dining room. It held the last-minute additions to meals, kept food warm, and stored utensils needed for serving. And with or without a butler in your employ, many modern hosts still benefit from these uses.

The butler’s pantry separates what is needed for entertainment and dining from the clutter of a busy kitchen. You can keep everything handy that you may need — either for entertaining in general or items for this specific party — instead of having to dig through the kitchen cabinets and drawers. It also presents a more organized and cleaner part of the kitchen to guests.

2. A Wet Bar

Not everyone today likes to host large dinner parties that require extra staging space. Are you more interested in hosting cocktail parties, having a beer with your friends, or tasting your favorite wines? Then use the butler’s pantry as a wet bar. A wet bar’s needs are similar to many butler’s pantry details, including a sink, counter space, storage cabinets, and refrigeration.

Wine lovers might add temperature-controlled wine storage and chilling stations, and beer lovers can install a keg in the refrigerator or even add taps.

3. Extra Storage

Many kitchen owners could always use more storage. Are you one of them? If storage in the actual kitchen is lacking due to design constraints, move some of your needs to adjacent storage space. Customize your butler’s pantry to the types of storage that are most useful for you. Some cooks like to store large, little-used items in this offsite area, for instance, while others store necessities for certain types of meals.

4. Kitchen Overflow

A single, very large kitchen might seem like a great idea, but it can be impractical for everyday use. The work triangle becomes very large, wasting energy and steps. The entire kitchen could become inefficient, and you might accidentally end up with wasted space that could be better utilized.

The butler’s pantry helps break up a larger kitchen into more useful parts. The regular, daily use kitchen has everything you need for family use. And the butler’s pantry is an overflow workspace to deploy when you need more room. Stock it with additional appliances like a refrigerator, warming drawers, an oven, and microwave as well as plenty of counter space.

5. Coffee or Snack Station

Finally, if your butler’s pantry is located between the kitchen and public rooms (like the dining room, family room, or living room), consider using it as a coffee or snack station.

Stations like these hold all the necessary little items to make your morning coffee, fix movie night snacks, or get the kid’s breakfast ready in the morning. Keeping this all contained to a single location keeps the kitchen clean and traffic-free throughout the day.

Where to Start

Could any of these ideas for a modern butler’s pantry work for your kitchen? If so, start creating the perfect addition by meeting with the design pros at DESIGNfirst Builders today. We will work with you to identify the right way to use your extra space to make your kitchen work better, your hosting more enjoyable, and your family more comfortable.