It’s not exactly a revelation to say that everyone today walks around with a supercomputer in their pocket. This fact has changed how people live, work and play — and how they do business with restaurants. Device culture’s most obvious impact on the foodservice sector is the rise of online/app-based ordering and the subsequent pickup by either the customer or delivery driver. The shift toward this revenue stream started prior to 2020 but accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Operators, therefore, need to make pick-up areas and operations a central part of the design process, says Ignacio “Iggy” Goris, principal and co-founder of Profitality, a restaurant-focused industrial engineering firm. Even today, he says, he encounters operators who open, and then are moving tables around to accommodate pick-up shelves just a few weeks later. “If it were designed from the get-go, they would be in a much better place,” he says.
Shelves, of course, aren’t the only solution for pick-up areas. These spaces need to be well-considered to prioritize what’s important to the brand, says Steve Starr, president of Charlotte, N.C.-based Starr Design, which offers architecture, interior design, kitchen design and graphics services. There are, he says, competing priorities in the design of these spaces. A high-volume fast-casual operation like Chipotle may prioritize speed and convenience, making shelves a good choice.