Staring and running a business is not an easy task if you ask about the efforts involved. Even before the business sets up and starts operating there are lots of things to be done. As we are talking about a restaurant business the first thing that comes in place is the designing of the restaurant. Designing the placement of various areas from the kitchen to the dining space needs some brainstorming. You might say what’s tough in that, just find a restaurant designer and hire it.
Yes, this may be an option but when you are operating with a limited budget probably you can’t have the freedom to opt for this. Even if you have the budget to hire a restaurant designer you can’t rely entirely on someone and chill. Well, it’s your business, and your blood and sweat are needed to make it grow. Before going for external help like the designer you need to be clear of the basics and have an idea of what you want. Knowing that this is something that might trouble you we are here with this discussion. Our focus here would be on those basic requirements of a restaurant design that you must know.
Ensuring Comfort
A restaurant is a place where people mostly come to relax and dine. The most important thing to take care of in every aspect of the design is that how it can offer maximum comfort to the visitors. Here the general mistake that most designers and restaurant owners do is to prefer cost-cutting in certain areas without assessing its effect. To understand with an example take a situation where you have saved some amount on the ventilation part of the restaurant without much assessment.
Now, this would be causing you trouble when the visitors to the restaurant would face a lack of ventilation, air circulation. Thus, one rule of thumb in restaurant design is giving the comfort of the visitors the utmost priority. After all the business rests on good hospitality services.
The Entrance
Business is all about the impression you create in the mind of visitors. For a restaurant, the entrance part is what that casts the first impression on the visitors. Thus, it is important to make them feel good and curious about the setup as they enter. Here if you are looking for a theme-based restaurant like cinematic theme, historic or traditional then you should go for entrance setup in sync with that.
Say for example if you are planning to have a beach theme then the banner, the look at the entrance should be like that. Here you can use the statues or palm trees to get the feel. The idea depends upon creativity and rests with the theme or look you want.
Dining Area
The dining area forms the heart and soul of the restaurant. Here you need to do most of the work. The idea here should be to divide the area into 2 to 3 or more parts. The first part should be the general dining that is for guests that come in normally. Lightning and ambiance play an important role here. This should be kept in sync with the general theme of the restaurant you have in mind. Further, elemnts like music or other sources of entertainment shall also be added.
The second part should be the specified area where some special bookings and functions could be organized. It should be made sure that this area is away from the general dining so that there is no disturbance to the customers on either side. The other areas should include the takeaway counters and the waiting areas for such customers. This should be near to the reception counter say adjacent to it or on either side of it.
Kitchen
If the dining area was the heart and soul the kitchen is the engine of all the background action. The kitchen space should be divided into various divisions and sections. The major divisions should be the storage area for the ration and the cold storage stuff. The washing division, pantry division, and the staff resting and washroom.
Within these, there should be sections like food preparation area, assembling area, decoration area, savory section, vegetarian segment, dessert segment, etc. The main thing in the kitchen is to ensure proper ventilation. The circulation of the air should be perfect so that there is not too much humidity and heat due to the constant working of stoves, heaters, microwaves, etc.
The Restrooms
Often neglected but should not be. The restroom like the other areas is very important. The hygiene and cleanliness shall be of high level here. The thing that we want to talk about restroom is that its accessibility and location.
The restroom should generally be outside the cooking and dining area. Further, keeping in the need of all kinds of users there should be the arrangement for physically disabled people, customers that come in with kids, elderly people, etc. Accessibility is something that you should ensure with most of the elements of restaurants from the entrance, dining to seating.