My estimate is approximately 1.5 billion kitchens. That is simply by assuming a world population of 7.4 billion, and dividing by 5.
Looking up statistics leaves me frustrated by endless notes and qualifications, and odd categories in strange spreadsheets.
To think that the slogan for World Statistics Day recently was “Better data. Better lives”.
But from some dedicated searching, mine might be the first-ever published estimate of world kitchen numbers.
People do speak on the internet about 1.4 billion households worldwide – so 1.5b kitchens is probably in the general vicinity.
Meals Matter 
Probably wrong, households do not need kitchens. Many homes in Asia have no home cooking facilities, although boiling water is used to make a noodle snack. For many it is much cheaper to eat out and no washing up the end of the night.
LikeLike
And then we have to add those street kitchens, and restaurant kitchen, office kitchens, and institutional kitchens, and a few dwellings even have two. In another direction, if cooking is defined by cutting up (Symons, 2000), then a kitchen could be surprisingly modest.
LikeLike
So, “endless notes and qualifications” become necessary. Both households and kitchens need definition. What is a household if not a group of people centred on a hearth? Presumably not requiring induction stove, granite benches, freezer, dishwasher and “butler’s pantry”, what is a kitchen? Perhaps it’s somewhere with boiling water to make a noodle snack? Given a distributional definition of cooking, then a kitchen might be a knife sharing food. Etc, My blog post aimed at the world’s first estimate. Is it the winner?
LikeLike
I find your estimation to be quite insightful.
LikeLike