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Important aspects of Restaurant Design
Design and Architecture
Among many aspects of Interior Designing in a restaurant, Architecture and Design themes become the key that defines the overall outlook. Having a significant impact on the Customer Experience with entire floor planning efficiently crafted. The floor design must be such that the floor traffic could be handled at any point in time especially, in rush hours.
The customers must not feel claustrophobic walking and be seated in a congested space in a restaurant. Not just for customers, it makes an impact on your serving staff as well to provide better service. Based on research, it is suggested that an area of 20 sq. ft of space in Fine Dine Restaurants and 10 sq. ft of space in Quick Service Restaurants.
Customers should feel welcomed at the reception. The service desk should be placed at the center of the floor with access to all servers. Ensure that the servers are easily visible to the customers and that your customers can always be visible to the servers.
Most restaurants are built as Greenfield projects from scratch. New architecture and interior design will be easy to optimize to customer behavior. Making a Brownfield restaurant design has some restrictions in terms of available space, existing interior, and many more factors.
Lighting
Lighting is a key aspect of a restaurant which can be adopted in both natural and artificial lighting. It wouldn’t make any sense if the light kills the good mood of your customers. Ambient, task and Accent lighting are three types of lighting for restaurants.
- Ambient Lighting – The overall look and feel of the restaurant are defined by the Ambient Lighting. The brightness inside the restaurant defines the entire ambiance which can be adopted depending on the kind of restaurant. For example, a QSR uses bright lights to reduce to time spent by customers on-premise, and a fine dining restaurant will use dim lighting for a relaxing atmosphere and increase time spent.
- Task Lighting – It is used for focussed lighting such as study tables, computer desks, and dining tables. It’ll help diners to read menus and servers to work easily. Task lighting is a strategic placement like guiding pathways or highlighting mini bars, etc.
- Accent Lighting – They are mostly employed for decorative purposes. It can be used to project brand colors for building an identity for a brand.
Seating
The seating structure is an important aspect of the floor plan. Unstructured seating patterns will affect consumer behavior. A variety of factors decide seating arrangements in an eatery whether it’s QSR, Fast food chain, or fine dining. It affects the comfort level of the diner as well. It has a lot to do with Customer psychology.
If the seating is too close to the tables, it will invade the privacy of diners. Too much congestion will affect service. Restaurants have been adopting new design patterns with different seating designs such as poolside, rooftop, minibars, etc within a single restaurant space to cater to different customers depending on their companions like friends, family, single, etc.
Colors
Colors play a very important role in the Interior Design of a restaurant. It can be used to target your ideal visitors as well. Different colors bring out different emotions and set moods. Fine dining restaurants are light for a mood where customers would want to linger as opposed to QSRs. Fine dining employs colors like blue or turquoise that’s ideal for them. QSRs, on the other hand, need customers to order more and eat fast, thus making warm coating suitable for them.
Scent
Appetite can be induced in your customer by letting some smells float in from the kitchen. It can be achieved by opting for an open kitchen in interior design or managing ventilation in such a way. Or you can opt for artificial scents such as well vanilla, lavender, etc. which can induce emotions as well.
Based on the type of customer experience you want to create in your restaurant, you can choose from a variety of artificial smells. Sometimes letting open smells from the kitchen might kill the appetite making the place feel small and congested.
Acoustics
Acoustics is an aspect of Interior Designing that can alter the mood of the diners as well. Based on the type of music being played in the background of a restaurant, can kill or enhance the customer’s mood. The volume, the music genre, the speaker’s placement, and many factors impact behavior on-premise.
The restaurant employs the same psychology to make an impact on diners as well. Acoustic being loud will create noise, and being soft will suggest to customers that the neighboring diners can hear you. Using false ceilings, carpets and curtains will help the restaurants control the background music and sound as well.
Most of the marketing is about understanding your customer’s psychology and taking advantage of it to get create the needed atmosphere. Employ these strategies in your restaurant interior design to make sure that you leave a desirable impact and memorable experience on your customers and make them come again.
