If restaurants aren't "communal kitchens", what are they? I ate lunch picked up from a KFC near my workplace today, along with hundreds of other people. The employees of the Colonel made our meal because we all had other work to do. In the Soviet Union there were state run communal cafeterias called stolovaya where everyone ate. You dined on whatever slop they were dishing out, but working in one was a choice job because you could steal food and not starve, and it gave you something to trade on the black market.

At my workplace we have group meals with over 50 people every couple of months or so, and we play games and the events are super fun. The meals give everyone a chance to get to know each other, but they are catered. Organizing a group meal where everyone would take a part in preparation of the food and the cleaning up would require a person to take a lot of time to organize it, and I bet that a huge amount of food would be wasted, or there wouldn't be enough. I'd be worried about food poisoning because everyone can't cook, and everyone can't wash dishes for that matter.

I'm a good cook and have prepared food for large numbers of people, and I'm really good at cleaning up and have washed dishes professionally. So I would almost certainly have to do more work than others in a communal dining situation, but I would also tell other people what to do simply because I know what they should be doing. If someone who had never done that work before didn't do what I told them to do, I'd physically throw them out of the kitchen because they are a safety hazard and in everyone else's way. And thus hierarchy is born.