5 ways to design your restaurant for pickup and delivery success

From a well-thought-out labeling system to the placement of the food pickup area inside your restaurant, there are many ways to design for efficient and accurate pickup and delivery service. Here are a few snippets of the advice Starr Design Chief and President Steve Starr shared recently with the editors at Foodservice Equipment & Supplies.

 

Low-tech upgrades: “A thoughtful labeling system plays a critical role in any successful pickup station … These don’t have to be complicated or expensive, they just have to be well thought-out to make it easy for the staff to quickly identify each item in an order, who the order is for and how many packages (bags and boxes) are in the order.” In addition to helping to ensure more accuracy, the label conveys to the guest at home that the food was checked and “sealed” at the restaurant, providing a sense of safety.

 

Counter intelligence: Another way to design restaurant takeout areas for greater accuracy is to consider a tiered shelf system with the to-go expediter station 30 inches off the floor—slightly lower than the 36 inches we recommend for the dine-in expediter station, Starr told FE&S. The shorter height “allows employees to look down into bags and verify their contents” before sending food out the door.

 

One cookline or two? While there are efficiency benefits to both approaches, Starr told FE&S he sees many restaurants maintain one cookline for prepping the food, and then split off to a second expediter station at the end of the line with space and supplies for packaging pickup and delivery orders.

 

Pickup placement: When designing the pickup station in a restaurant, Starr likes to place it close to the kitchen, where staff can easily transfer food from the expeditor station to the pickup area. “When they’re close, the two stations can easily talk to each other.”  

 

Well-organized all the way: The best pickup stations are well-organized, above all. “It should house containers, condiments and silverware,”—everything a staffer needs to assemble an order, Starr said. “The organization needs to be very thoughtful and ergonomic so staff can use both hands and work on packing multiple orders at once.”

 

Read the full article from Foodservice Equipment & Supplies.


starr featured in foodservice equipment & supplies magazine

Among other industry experts, Steve Starr contributed to the featured article “Front & Center” for the November 2022 issue of FoodService Equipment & Supplies magazine about how important Open Kitchen and Food Theater is in today’s restaurant world.


the city kitch: even kitchen design starts with brand alignment

This year, we’ve had the pleasure of working within an emerging trend in the foodservice industry: ghost kitchens. Made more popular by the pandemic, ghost kitchens are shared kitchen spaces that allow multiple concepts to develop and sell their cuisine to consumers without the expenses of a traditional stand-alone brick and mortar.

Our design philosophy ensures that each element of your foodservice concept tells the story of who you are, reaches the audience you want, and delivers an experience that meets your brand’s high standards. Sometimes this is relatively straightforward; with ghost kitchens it can be a challenge. For The City Kitch (TCK), it was crucial to clearly understand their brand and target audiences because they are essentially talking to two audiences: tenants and food customers.

The City Kitch (TCK) is a ghost kitchen concept with limited customer seating. When they approached us about redesigning the lobby of their Charlotte - West End location, we realized that there was an opportunity to clarify their branding, positioning and market differentiation to ensure alignment across their leadership before we proceeded into the design process.

The Challenges

TCK had recently been acquired by a new ownership group and was going through an evaluation of its assets. It needed clarity on its core audiences, its ideal customers, and what products / services were most meaningful to this audience. TCK wanted to ensure its branding met its long-term goals and could ensure maximum profitability with impactful investments. The company was struggling in a gray area between a ghost kitchen and food hall, without clearly understanding what was truly driving the concept.

To top it all off, it had received some media coverage which seemed to muddy the waters even further on what differentiated them from the growing “lower cost” ghost kitchen market.

Our Process to Align Branding and Design

Once our team identified what was needed, we set out a vigorous Brand Discovery Process for TCK. The goals were simple but crucial: identify who their target audience is and why TCK should be their go-to spot for kitchen space and unique food experiences.

We developed a positioning statement to provide a timeless definition of TCK and what tenants and guests love about the brand:

The City Kitch is built for foodies, by foodies, and with the ultimate “food-preneur” in mind. Whether you are a start-up, a master chef, or fall somewhere in between, we have the flexible kitchen space, resources and community you need to help you make your concept the best in the market.

We also worked closely with their leadership to develop a brand story, pillars, and target audiences and then helped align everyone on these values. Our team also assisted the company in understanding their positioning in the marketplace and understanding how TCK fit into the landscape against growing competition.

The second part of our strategic process, prior to actually designing, was to evaluate their operation to look for opportunities for efficiency and cost savings. Through this process, we:

  • Evaluated their tenants’ core processes to increase efficiencies: product receiving, breakdown, storage, prep, storage, cook & packaging, and finally shipping or customer pick-up
  • Clearly defined a user-friendly multi-tenant food pick-up process for guests and 3rd party delivery drivers
  • Created additional opportunities for leasable space for varied types of tenants
  • Analyzed equipment layouts and adjacencies to minimize utility rough-in & infrastructure costs

The Results of Strategic Design

With a clearly defined message around positioning and branding, we were able to recommend effective designs for the lobby of their West End location. Using this clear brand “language” for the look of the building, we provided designs that maximized their leasable space while providing a streamlined carry-out experience for guests and third-party delivery drivers. This in-turn will provide more value to their tenants and create more opportunities for them to market their kitchens effectively.

We were able to help them create 12% more monetizable space out of the same square footage. We also clearly defined user experiences and created flows which optimized their space and made the customer experience more “user friendly and enjoyable.”

Simply put, this alignment of branding and design helps set TCK up to outcompete other ghost kitchens in the market.


Dining Trends to Focus on this Holiday Season

We all know that most holidays produce strong restaurant sales. According to Bizfluent research, the winter holiday season is typically the second busiest time of the year (after the warm weather/vacation season) because restaurant guests tend to travel, celebrate with friends and family and look for social opportunities to dine out. According to Dave Bennet with Mirus Restaurant Solutions, all the holidays during the pandemic have produced spikes in restaurant traffic starting with Easter and steadily increasing to peak on Labor Day. Now we are adding the current spike in the COVID-19 Pandemic to the mix at the height of holiday celebrations.

What should restaurants expect from the 2020 holiday season and what can they do to capitalize on every available opportunity to increase holiday sales?

To answer these questions, we commissioned a 10-question online survey and garnered approximately 500 respondents. I won’t bore you with the detailed results (although I’m happy to send them to anyone who asks), but I will give you a summary of the answers to the key questions we identified.  Here are the highlights:

 

1. Approximately 44% of the respondents either dined out or ordered off-premises during a typical holiday season. That number is expected to drop to 38% during this holiday season. So, less people will utilize restaurants this holiday season. No surprise there.

OrderAccuracy

2. The research also yielded another no-brainer. The majority of people who will utilize restaurants this season will do it through off-premise carry out with this number actually increasing by 5.5% over prior years.

3. The real opportunity this holiday season is to capture that additional 5.5% of take-out customers. Guests are looking for a few key things:

  • Food quality & service – offer all your off-premise options, either heated or cold, with very well-thought-out heating instructions so that the food quality is maintained.
  • Order accuracy – focus on your systems and make sure that they include a quality control step to ensure that the customer is getting EXACTLY what they ordered. Spend the time to add the newer modules to your POS and take-out technologies to help support your staff efforts.

important

  • Safety first – clearly communicate verbally, graphically, and physically that you are adhering to the highest standards of COVID protocols.  30% of respondents stated that health and safety are their highest priority in making dining & food decisions during this holiday season.

4. Remember those dining in. Don’t forget about the guests who still want the full-service dine-in experience in the restaurant. They still account for almost 13%, and their check average and gross margins are typically much higher than off-premise business.

We’ve received many horror stories about customers making the decision to dine out because they long for the social experience, only to end up with a terrible ordeal because the restaurant is so focused on its’ off-premise business.

If you don’t have the staff and the systems to successfully handle both, close the restaurant for dine-in business and put everything into your off-premise operations. No restaurant today can afford to give a guest less than a remarkable dine-in experience, even with restrictions.

To quote the old  rubric  “You may not have it all together, but together you can have it all.” Do everything you can, from adding limited-time offers to highlighting your remarkable side dishes, so that customers crave and rave about something from your restaurant on their holiday table.  It doesn’t have to be the whole meal, but if you can find a way to be part of your clients’ new holiday traditions, you set your restaurant up for strong sales and an enhanced reputation as we move into 2021 and out of this terrible pandemic.

 

diningkeypoints


Fighting Through the Fatigue

As I was going through articles I’d saved about how the COVID-19 Pandemic will affect the foodservice industry and how restaurants will need to respond to changing guest expectations, I came across this article in Inc. Magazine by Brian Hamilton that I saved from the beginning of the crisis. 6 Actions to Take in the Next 90 days to Save Your Business was not only relevant back in April, but might be even more applicable now that we’re all suffering from information fatigue and burn-out due to the stress of so much uncertainty.

This applies to every business owner that’s either struggling to keep their company viable or on the opposite end of the spectrum and struggling to keep up with added demand under adverse production conditions. The 6 items that Brian laid out in April are still very valid now to help all of us fight the fatigue associated with the pandemic:

1. Vigorously control what you can. Vigorously ignore what you can’t.

This is a principle that I talk about often. I’m sure my three children can recite my version by heart. All you can control is your effort and your attitude, the rest you leave for God. This, more than anything else helps me fight through the fatigue of constant uncertainty.

2. Guard Employee Morale.

Now even more than 6 months ago, employees are feeling the stress and the strain of all the sudden changes and uncertainty. Be honest with them and lead with Radical Candor. If you want to know more about how to lead with Radical Candor, read Kim Scott’s book or watch her Ted Talk. Remember our people are our most precious resource.

Radical Candor graphic

3. Preserve cash where you can.

We’re 6 months into this mess and it seems like it can easily go on for another 12 months. I’m finding it very easy to slip back into old habits of spending impulsively on little things. Most companies that are feeling squeezed by the pandemic have already eliminated the major non-essential expenses and many companies that are seeing a deluge of work need to remember that this workload probably won’t last indefinitely; so we all still need to watch the small discretionary spending preserve cash to either save our resources during a drought our save them for when the drought comes.

4. Be first in line.

Many organizations still have PPP forgiveness applications to submit, debt restructuring and / or new loans to secure to continue growing if your products or services are in heavy demand. Either way, the squeaky wheel gets the grease; so, keep in front of your bankers, accountants, and financiers.

5. Get back to the basics.

Start with maniacal customer service. Great customer service always begins and ends with empathy. It’s easy to get caught up in your own craziness, but is incredibly important to think of others and remember that they might be going through something far worse and your help might really make a difference for them right now.

6. Pivot your product or service to new conditions.

I really struggled with this one because all I heard for 3 to 4 months was “pivot.” I felt like I was caught in the episode of Friends where Ross is trying to get a couch that clearly won’t fit, up a flight of steps. All he kept yelling was “Pivot, Pivot, Pivot.” That’s great, but many of us, like me, have spent their entire career focused on one niche that they love and don’t want to leave that niche. Then a close friend reminded me that a true pivot in sports is keeping one foot planted and rotating your body around that foot. I found that to be excellent advice 3 months ago and continuously need to remind myself of it as I work through the many options, alternatives and even opportunities in front of me. Stay in your niche, but look for other opportunities revolving around it.

I liked Brian Hamilton’s article back in April and appreciate it even more in October.

Read Full Article Here


7 Key Aspects of the New Kitchen

As we reflect on 2020, we can all agree that this year brought several challenges and required learning new adaptation skills previously unthinkable, especially for the restaurant & foodservice industry. Many focused on the changes required in the front-of-house because they were most pressing; however, the back-of-house also requires some significant rethinking.

I recently presented on the 7 Key Aspects of the "new normal" Kitchen during Foodservice Equipment Report's NEXT seminar and would like to pass along these resources to you. Watch the segment below and use the “kitchen audit checklist” to determine if your restaurant kitchen is set up to successfully move forward in the "new normal."

Watch this video to learn more about the "new normal" kitchen:

Is your kitchen set up to meet the requirements of our "new normal?" Use the checklist below to determine your score.

7 Key Aspects of New Kitchen Checklist


Steve Starr f.e.r. Interview - 7 Key Aspects of the New Kitchen

As we reflect on 2020, we can all agree that this year brought several challenges and required learning new adaptation skills previously unthinkable, especially for the restaurant & foodservice industry. Many focused on the changes required in the front-of-house because they were most pressing; however, the back-of-house also requires some significant rethinking.

I recently presented on the 7 Key Aspects of the “new normal” Kitchen during Foodservice Equipment Report’s NEXT seminar and would like to pass along these resources to you. Watch the segment below and use the “kitchen audit checklist” to determine if your restaurant kitchen is set up to successfully move forward in the “new normal.”

Watch this video to learn more about the “new normal” kitchen:

 

Is your kitchen set up to meet the requirements of our “new normal?” Use the checklist below to determine your score.


How to get True ROI on Your Outdoor Dining Spaces – Part 2

By Steve Starr, principal, starrdesign

In Part One of this series we tasked restaurant operators to answer several questions about their outdoor dining space. This was done to get operators thinking about and thinking through the best ways to capitalize on these spaces for maximum ROI. For the purpose of this article, we will now make some design recommendations intended to make outdoor dining spaces friendlier and more inviting to guests.

For those that are looking for a happy medium, we’ve found a few things to be helpful in mitigating weather extremes and getting a few more useful weeks out of your outdoor dining spaces, especially as cooler temperatures threaten to limit outdoor dining capacity.

    1. Pay attention to the direction your patio faces. Understanding passive solar design is critical. Most people know that in the northern hemisphere the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. But what they don’t quite grasp is that it’s always in the south. It rises in the southeast and sets in the southwest. In the summer, it’s higher in what’s referred to as the ‘sky vault’ and in winter it’s lower in the sky vault. So, roof overhangs, awnings, and other horizontal projections covering an outdoor dining space can be very effective if it’s facing south because it provides shade in the hot summer and a little bit more sun in the cooler winter. If you’re on the south side of the building, then shading and / or complete covering is very helpful at blocking the direct sunlight and keeping the outdoor area cooler. If your patio is on the north side of the building, a roof or shade covering is not required and might even lead to a dank feeling because the patio is always in the building’s shadow. Although without the covering, guests are exposed to sudden rain showers. Outdoor dining spaces on the east or west sides of the building are a little bit harder to keep in the shade, with a southwest facing patio being the hardest shade. Vertical fin walls made from exterior fabric, landscape screens or feature elements help block the direct sun from the sides of an east or west facing dining area.
    2. Large and well designed, low velocity, high air volume fans set above the level of your outdoor lighting can provide a gentle breeze in hotter weather creating a relative cooling effect. When run in the opposite direction, they effectively move hotter air down to the level of the guests. The key is not just standard ceiling fans, but ones that turn slowly, but move a great deal of air. They can also help relieve the perceived dampness by continuously moving the air through the space, facilitating evaporation. Patio heaters are also effective if used in conjunction with these low velocity fans by warming up a space that might be a little too cool in autumn evenings. We’ve found that several smaller, lower wattage infrared electric heaters work better than fewer, larger gas heaters, but they are a little more expensive.
    3. Planters, inviting foliage/landscaping are a key element that address three important factors. First is that people associate nature with health; adding planted pots, trees, green screens, or landscape beds help to convey a safe & healthful environment. Secondly, larger pots, trees or planter boxes help to add anchoring elements to organize seating areas and act as natural dividers. The third, and possibly most important factor, is that landscape and plantings help to create a cooler environment. Solid concrete, asphalt, wood, or other hard paving surfaces retain heat in the summer and create a “heat island effect,” where the air temperature outside might be 90 degrees and the hard patio surface emanates an additional 3-10 degrees from the ground, raising the temperature for guests. The plants and natural areas do not retain heat and even help to lower the temperature slightly through the photosynthesis process.
    4. Seasonal or roll-down wall panels are two other elements that can be used to temper weather conditions for a covered outdoor dining patio. We recommend fairly thick 20 mil PVC & 18 oz. Ripstop vinyl coated polyester roll-down walls panels run on magnetic tracks to keep the fabric taught and looking clean. In most climates, they provide a few additional weeks of use during the late autumn / early winter months and / or provide some protection from bad rainstorms.

The Goldilocks Principal – how much is just right?

Although we have identified several elements that contribute to a great outdoor dining experience, and may help to increase ROI, success requires careful choreography. Knowing which, how much, and where to use the various elements is key in designing a great outdoor eating environment. Just like the old fairy tale Goldilocks & the Three Bears, Goldilocks had to try different bowls of porridge and different beds before she found the ones that were just right. That’s why some of the greatest outdoor dining environments are created over time. Restauranteurs try a variety of elements to test what’s just right. If you want to move the process along a little faster, we suggest working with a restaurant design professional and studying the outdoor dining environment with the same level of thought and intention you would your kitchen or dining room. We’ve found that visiting a number of inspirational environments with your designer and developing images studies helps evaluate which options and elements will be successful. Creating a 3-d model and renderings of the outdoor dining environment is another way to look at several options before having to make a final decision and pay for construction. The last thing we’ve found useful for our clients is to mock-up the area in a warehouse or even a parking lot to see if the spacing, elements, and solar orientation are what you want it to be. It’s a life-size, inexpensive way to refine your idea so is the final product is one step closer to being ‘just right.’

By incorporating one or even a few of these design elements, restaurant operators can keep their patios and outdoor dining spaces open longer, thus maximizing ROI even through the cooler months. No one knows what the future holds, but by having a plan we can at least mitigate some of the financial challenges brought about by the current pandemic.


How to get True ROI on Your Outdoor Dining Spaces

We started researching this topic long before the COVID-19 pandemic to quantify the return on our clients’ investment for outdoor dining spaces. Many of our clients were investing significantly into their outdoor dining spaces, while others were pulling back on the size and complexity of their patios and sidewalk cafés. We were constantly asked what the right amount of investment (real estate, number of tables, type of space, complexity of enclosure, etc.) is for a specific concept.

Being an outright restaurant nerd, I tasked my team with gathering data and examples of restaurant concepts which have received substantial returns for their outdoor dining spaces. Our research initiative and the data collected thus far was placed ‘on hold’ as we, along with the rest of the world, watched businesses and restaurants close. As the pandemic progressed and restaurants started to reopen, the notion of outdoor dining spaces driving sales became even more important.

Here are several things to consider when developing an outdoor dining space:

What is the purpose?

When considering the purpose of your outdoor dining space, you should ask yourself the following questions. Are you looking to add seating / table capacity in appropriate weather? Are you trying to provide an alternative experience to your indoor dining rooms? Are you seeking an opportunity to host private / semi-private parties? Are you thinking of the outdoor space(s) as an extension of your bar experience? Are you expecting to use this space 4, 6, 9 or 12 months of the year?

All of these, and more, are valid uses for outdoor dining spaces. The key to defining the purpose, however, is that one space can rarely meet all these objectives. If your outdoor dining space can meet all these objectives, it likely requires an unusually high investment.

What can the kitchen and waitstaff realistically support?

Years ago, we designed a beautiful outdoor courtyard dining space for an iconic gourmet food & wine purveyor. It had all the elements of a lively outdoor dining environment: attractive, moderately low maintenance, appropriate furniture, mixture of shade & sun, one or two specialty seating types that act as focal elements, beautiful plants / greenery along the perimeter and intermixed with the seating, and a small stage area for live entertainment. With this level of investment, most people expected it would garner a large ROI and add to the concept’s bottom line, but it unfortunately closed after one spring – fall cycle. The problem was not the design or even the amount of the investment- the downfall was the location and operation. The courtyard was 3 storefronts away from the Wine Room and even further to the market / café. The result was great food, great wine, but terrible service. The patio was just too far for the staff to work efficiently and when the outdoor dining area was full, both the small kitchen and the servers got bogged down. Even with state-of-the-art technology (for that time), it just could not meet the guests’ expectations.

They key take away is that although outdoor space can increase seating capacity (and revenue), its success is critically linked to the operation and service. Increased revenue is good, but not at the expense of a positive guest experience. Many guests are now willing sacrifice a perfect experience given the pandemic and its effects, but they will not sacrifice reasonably good service.

What makes a great outdoor dining environment?

1. Varied experiences – This can come from different types of seating (i.e. picnic tables, hi-top tables, lounge furniture, etc.), a variety of areas where one is covered and one is not, gaming areas vs. seating areas, or simply areas focused around different elements (i.e. street view, fire pit, TVs, etc.).

2. Good scenery – Nobody wants to eat or drink while staring at a sea of parked cars or a busy 4 lane expressway. People seek an outdoor dining EXPERIENCE. The visual, and audible, surroundings drastically impact the experience. Strong views of nature, people watching along pedestrian boulevards, or focused views towards live entertainment, TVs, landscaping, or other focal elements give the dining environment unique character.

3. Weather control – I know this may not seem very profound, but outdoor dining often has an inherent draw simply because it’s not inside. While the average person spends the majority of their day indoors, often staring at a computer screen, the outdoors open-up the beauty and splendor of all that mother nature has to offer – which is sometimes poor weather. An obvious but crucial key to a successful outdoor dining environment is mitigating the unpredictability of the weather factors. The difficult task for restaurateurs is balancing how much you want to try to control the weather and how much you want to embrace it. We have clients that span the entire spectrum from creating completely enclosed, air conditioned spaces that can be 75% opened up to the outdoors on those few days during the year when the weather is perfect, to clients with 10 tables under an awning along the front or side of the building. There is no singular right or wrong answer because one solution does not fit all and going back to consideration No. 1 – What’s the purpose behind the outdoor dining spaces?

Once you have defined and outlined the answers to these questions, we can begin moving on more deeply with the next phase, and part two of our series: outdoor design. This article will cover how to mitigate weather extremes, simple design elements to create peaceful and inviting outdoor spaces, and how much is just right. By following these simple steps, and the recommendations outlined in article two, you can learn how to get true ROI on your outdoor dining spaces.


Design Challenges: When Restaurants Meet Retail

The two dominant trends in retail development — lifestyle centers and mixed-use buildings —present unique challenges for restaurant designers.

Lifestyle centers attempt to recreate the village green or Main Street format. Mixed-use buildings tend to have restaurants and retail located at the street level and residential or office space located in the stories above. Having a prime urban location often means a higher volume of guests and increased sales, but these two interpretations of New Urbanism also challenge the core tenets of good restaurant design and present numerous challenges to designers and operators.

There are several elements to consider up-front when designing restaurants to fit in these developments.

Intentionally design the customer journey. While true urbanism developed naturally, lifestyle centers replicate the experience in a contrived manner. In true urban environments, guests park in the back of stores and walk through streets or alleys to get to the front door. This was part of the charm. Now, lifestyle centers often utilize large internal parking areas, while storefronts still face the street. This leaves designers with a conundrum. Where do you place the entrance: facing the street or the parking area?

One solution is to create two front doors. This allows people to see the storefront from the road or center plaza while being able to enter from the parking lot. It’s not without its drawbacks, however. With two ways for guests to arrive in the space, you now have to create a common circulation path and control multiple customer journeys. By connecting the rear entrance to the front entrance, circulation can take up a significant amount of space. Further complicating matters, in many cases, guests rarely use the door facing the street. In some instances, it may even make sense to have a third door for the back of the house to create a designated area to bring in deliveries and take out trash.

Additionally, it’s important to look at the customer’s path from the parking lot to the entrance. Depending on the location and accessibility of parking, it may be necessary to build a passageway through a multistory space so guests don’t have to walk around the building. If this isn’t possible, another option is to negotiate valet parking with the landlord.

There are a number of solutions you can use to address these concerns. No matter what you decide, it’s important to make sure you’re thinking about the customer journey and intentionally addressing it from the start.

Signage. In many instances, a shell building’s architects don’t plan for extensive signage. The front is often entirely composed of glass and a canopy. If the restaurant branding doesn’t lend itself to a canopy, you may need to actually create a surface to place a mounted sign.

In lifestyle centers, if you decide to only build one front door that faces the parking area, you may consider using vinyl window graphics on the storefront that faces the street. This will help to mask the back of house, but films with graphics will typically count toward your limited signage requirements. Finally, it is important to note that window films will void the warranty on newly installed windows. Weigh the pros and cons of each before making a decision.

Additional construction costs. There are often many unexpected costs for restaurant owners going into mixed-use buildings. Since these developments have multiple stories and use varies by floor, each time the floors change from one use to another, construction and fire safety regulations become more stringent. Therefore, to protect the residents living above, a high-fire-rated assembly is needed between levels that change use. This impacts two factors in restaurant design: floor drains and exhaust.

The shell architect is responsible for designing the different levels. However, in cases where parking areas are below the space, the restaurant’s owner is generally responsible for installing kitchen drains in those floors. It will take extra time, money and expertise to build all the drains in these high-fire-rated floors. In some cases, it may be necessary to X-ray the material to determine where you can’t drill, and this makes the entire process costly. Additionally, adequate clearance in parking levels below restaurant spaces will be required to run plumbing lines at proper slopes for drainage while still maintaining minimum vehicle clearances.

Kitchen exhaust is another factor that the shell architect often doesn’t consider. Smoke filled with grease can be an enormous fire hazard if not properly handled. Part of the puzzle is getting the necessary equipment and exhaust through the residential areas in rated shafts and out to the roof. Often, there isn’t enough room to take the exhaust through the multiple stories above, and this can become an additional cost for the restaurant owner during construction. Retrofitting existing shafts with grease ducts can also become an expensive issue during construction.

Retail developers understand that restaurants are ideal additions to their commercial spaces. However, many don’t understand the design implications and requirements of restaurant spaces. Restaurateurs need to be aware of the differences and account for higher costs when looking at these sites.

Featured on Restaurant Development + Design.


Will you let tech build or block customer connection?

Veteran restaurant designer and consultant, Steve Starr, brought a lot of heavyweight design experience to his talk recently at the National Restaurant Show in Chicago, including his Charlotte, North Carolina agency's experience plotting out restaurant environments for the likes of Panera, Swenson's Drive In and Mellow Mushroom Pizza. So his was a relatively attentive audience when he told the restaurateurs listening to remember that ultimately they really do still have the control of exactly how much technology they bring into their restaurant locations today and how that, in turn, affects the design of their stores and the customer experience overall.

The original content of this post was written by Shelly Whitehead for QSR Web. Read full QSR Web article here


1 Problem, 3 Solutions: How Do I Get the Most from a Restaurant Designer While Containing Costs

I often hear about design fees and expectations from friends in the restaurant industry. They find a great designer yet have to scale back when costs get too high. Ultimately, the project and brand experience suffer when this happens.

Consumers today want innovative, fresh and unique concepts to visit and talk about with their friends. While great food sparks conversation among your diners and potential guests, so does unusual and appealing interior decor. When restaurant operators skimp on design in favor of cutting costs, they leave a lot of opportunity on the table.

So, how can operators control their design fees without sacrificing the individuality of their concept? Here are three ways:

Clearly define what you’re looking for and shop for the right thing. The best analogy I can give is shopping for a car. There are all different levels of quality in the automobile market (i.e. Scion, Toyota, Lexus) but, more importantly, there are very different types of vehicles (i.e. sedan, sports car, SUV, pick-up truck, etc.). Clearly define whether you want or need an SUV or a sedan. Regardless of the quality and price, different kinds of vehicles do very different things. No matter how much you pay for a Porsche 911 Targa (my personal favorite performance sports car), it’s not going to perform properly if it’s driven like an SUV. Design firms are exactly the same. There are those that really know how to perform concept development services and create unique, dynamic spaces. Conversely, there are those that are systems-oriented and can roll out a concept once the majority of the look and feel issues are clearly defined and documented. There also are a few firms that really know how to do both and these are the performance sport SUVs of the design world. As an operator, understand that restaurants are a unique project type. There are firms that specialize in specific restaurant-design work and other firms that simply dabble in it. Therefore, determine how much specialization you need and make sure the firms you are talking to are setup to deliver exactly what you need. You are likely to overspend either on fees or in construction/development cost if you are not shopping for the right thing.

Clearly state what you need and how your organization works, and then learn how the design firm works. Alignment in the process is a critical cost factor. When clients allow us to go through our well-defined methods in a linear fashion, the design costs are very well controlled and additional services/change orders are kept to a minimum. Conversely when you, as the client, don’t understand how the design firm works or even worse, the design firm doesn’t really have a defined methodology, the design process is typically more chaotic and circular. That chaos and lack of straight forward progress gets costly for everyone. We’ve also found that it doesn’t necessarily produce a better product. In fact, it often produces a less coordinated final set of drawings and more opportunities for things to become less cohesive.

Look to create a win-win scenario. It’s not going to produce the best result if you negotiate a project down so low that you start to work with a group already primed for resentment. If you pick the right firm and create a well-defined scope of service that fits their process and delivers what you need, you create a partnering relationship where you both work closely to manage each other’s expectations. Look to pay a fair fee and most good designers will work to move heaven and earth for you. If small, miscellaneous out-of-scope items come up, they’ll usually give you a “professional courtesy credit” because you showed them the courtesy of treating them like the professionals they are. Whereas, if you negotiate so hard up front to get the absolute lowest fee possible (or impossible in some cases), you’re likely to be charged for every minor thing not specifically listed in the scope of service. Also remember the old adage by the famous modern architect Mies van der Rohe, “God is in the details.” In order to properly manage everyone’s expectations, you have to get into the details. No design firm is simply going to design your restaurant with no definition and limitations to the scope of design services for a fixed amount. Pay close attention to the details of the scope up front and spend the time to speak with your designer to make sure your understanding clearly matches theirs.

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