Once a restaurateur mentioned in an interview: “I don’t want a restaurant to earn a lot of money. I want to design an extraordinary restaurant where I feel proud of working and my clients enjoy the experience of eating here.” Perhaps his goal was not to earn much money, but his request contains the key to doing so, and one of the secrets of restaurant design is the customer experience.
In this article we will develop the most important factors to consider in restaurant design, focusing on those that most concern, or those that can contribute the most in interior design. If you want to put your name on the list of the best ulladulla restaurants, follow this guide.
Space Intimacy
The distribution of spaces and functionalities seems fundamental when it comes to guaranteeing some privacy to the tables in the room. While it is true that there is a type of restaurant that does not require it, normally the intimacy of the tables is one of the attributes most valued by customers and therefore the quality of mandatory attention in restaurants.
It is usual to observe in the feedbacks as customers recommend, and in fact, they choose in the reservations a specific table to eat in a certain restaurant. And they usually do it based on the intimacy attribute and other characteristics might include; such as the possible views, the size of the table, the proximity to the entrance/exit door, the kitchen, etc.
In any case, if required, it is the interior designer’s job to achieve intimacy to the tables through the design without the number of tables and/or diners per turn of the restaurant suffers – if that were also a goal to pursue, which is sometimes, oddly enough, it isn’t.
However, we advise you to perfectly understand what a great restaurant experience is by visiting one of your favorite places to eat and observe well that why is it your favorite place to dine. Is it food? Is it the environment? Is it space or is it the quality of service?
Comfort in restaurant design
Within the design of restaurants, there are several items that seem to us of obligatory attention to make a restaurant comfortable for both its customers and the team that works in it. Let’s see what they are:
Lighting
If we had to choose the two main features that most identify the projects that come out of our study, we would say in the first place a well- founded design orientation to the client’s objectives, and secondly careful attention to natural and artificial lighting.
Lighting is a key to any business, but restaurant design can be decisive, for good and for bad. In a restaurant, the light must be fair, neither too much nor too little, and of course, quality. When we say quality, we mean that the light must be well planned to avoid annoying shadows, glare, shady areas, etc.
Acoustics
Achieving a pleasant atmosphere involves having control of the sound. You may be thinking about the choice of music, knowing how to measure tempos and so on, but the quality of the environment affects many other aspects apart from music. A good example is a reverberation, an element that is more important than music and often forgotten in restaurant design.
In this aspect, in the design of restaurants, the choice of materials acquires great importance, being the woods, fabrics and other absorbent finishes suitable to achieve to attenuate such an annoying sensation. Of course, in the market, we have a number of specific products that will allow us to have “noise” controlled.
Noise can be mitigated with a well-executed technical ceiling design, using proper materials to absorb noise, or even with a combination of both. For example, you can also view this restaurant kitchen door so that the sound does not pass so easily, especially in open spaces without walls. This ensures that customers do not have to shout to be heard, creating a more relaxed and comfortable atmosphere.
Comfortable environment
Good air conditioning is essential in the comfort of any business and we all understand that. However, another aspect is often neglected whose importance is crucial in the design of restaurants, air quality.
Not only must we guarantee a pleasant climate, we must ensure that visitors can breathe fresh and clean air that avoids the bad and annoying odors that are inevitably created in a restaurant. Therefore, in restaurant design, we must pay enough attention to the installation of air renewal and give it at least the same importance as air conditioning. Besides this, cleanliness of the restaurant’s space and kitchen should be thoroughly considered to offer a soothing ambiance to the visitors. A commercial kitchen cleaning service in Miami can be employed to achieve these goals.
The magic of scent
We have repeatedly talked about the importance of sensory marketing in our times, and more specifically olfactory marketing. Well, in restaurant design sensory marketing takes on a growing role. Let’s see some reasons.
In 1999, a study by the University of Rockefeller (New York) revealed that “the human being remembers 35% of what he smells, compared to 5% of what he sees, 2% of what he hears and 1% of what it touches.” You can imagine the priority level that we have to give to the management of odors in a restaurant.
But as if this were not enough, “memory is able to retain up to 10,000 different aromas, while it can only remember 200 colors” – added the renowned study that won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2004 to Richard Axel and Linda Bucks.
Furniture
It seems logical and evident that the selection of furniture for restaurants, both working and living, must meet a minimum of comfort. However, judging from what we see on a daily basis, many seem to want to drive customers out of their restaurants as soon as possible.
That said it is also important to emphasize that there are certain types of restaurants and situations in which we must favor the rapid circulation of diners. And although this should not affect the comfort of the same while they remain in the restaurant, we must seek in these cases a balance between two objectives a priority faced: comfort and rapid circulation of customers.
The choice of furniture for restaurants happens to be one of the critical points of the design. It is not strange to observe how sometimes the furniture of a restaurant is not aligned either with the type of cuisine, or with the rest of the restaurant’s design, or with its functionality, or with the target. This generates serious inconsistencies in the image and communication of the restaurant, but above all, it implies a dysfunction in the generation of comfort for the client.
We must not forget that the functionality, ergonomics, beauty, robustness, identification, relevance… that chefs demand for their kitchens and kitchen furniture should also extend to the living room and vice versa. The whole restaurant, from the bathrooms to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the living room and from the living room to the street, must speak in the same language and promulgate identical values. We talk about homogeneity, a basic concept in restaurant design.
Customer Experience In Restaurant Design
Restaurant design is a basic interior design manual. Customer experience in the current economic and social context, the client has infinite information and appropriate channels that allow him to compare at the click of a button and in a few seconds. Getting a customer to choose one or another restaurant can be a matter of luck – some conformers think – or a matter of small details – assure those who will succeed in the future.
As we have already mentioned, good restaurant design must be different, relevant and intense, and must always keep in mind the search for an optimal, different, relevant and intense customer experience. This philosophy will guide the long-term future of successful restaurants.
Offer An Unforgettable Experience
Customers of a restaurant are no longer looking for food; they want to live a memorable dining experience. They no longer seek to eat only, but they also want to live a total and memorable dining experience. And this is not only possible in a restaurant with Michelin Stars, the customer experience must also be taken care of in a restaurant that serves menu of the day, and everything in the design of restaurants should revolve around the customer experience.
Attention to customer experience is an attitude that must be contemplated and transmitted by the entire team. The interior design of the restaurant contributes and attends to this experience in the part that touches it, but it will never be enough without the involvement of the team and the adaptation of all the processes involved.
Quality Is King
There is no doubt that the quality of the product and the kitchen are crucial to succeed, but not enough. Nowadays quality is presupposed, nobody pays an extra for quality because they also offer it just around the corner. They are willing to pay more for a memorable experience that includes good quality and good service. But not just quality and service, the design of restaurants contributes to providing that plus for which the client is willing to choose you.
Conclusion
No restaurateur or chef needs a space to be just beautiful, but they need a functional and efficient restaurant that turns visitors into recurring customers, transmitting emotions and special feelings and aligned with a specific business strategy, using the most present and most visible tool for this.