Caterers, food trucks, market vendors and restaurants short of back-of-house room all use one. The equipment profile leans toward benches, cold storage, sinks and warewashing rather than a full cooking line, because the binding constraint on prep work is surface area and refrigeration, not burners.
It differs from a production kitchen in purpose and scale. A prep kitchen feeds a service location: the output is components finished somewhere else, that day or the next. A production kitchen is the output — batches of a finished item made repeatedly to the same specification. The line between them is repeatability, and most businesses cross it without noticing.
When you are assessing one to rent, count bench metres and fridge shelves before you look at the range, then check whether anything can be left between bookings. Prep work that has to be moved twice costs you the time you came for. Find prep space to rent.