Transforming spaces and designing inspiring restaurant interiors

Your restaurant design will affect the quality of brand experience customers receive throughout their stay. So, be clear on your brand positioning and concept and ensure this is carried out across all customer touch points and interior design elements. You need to create a restaurant that keeps the customer at the heart of your decision making and one that stays true to your brand’s purpose. Think about why your brand exists, what you want to offer your audience, and how your interior space can bring all of this together? This will positively impact your restaurant brand and more importantly your chance of success.

Creating a successful restaurant design is challenging and striking a balance between great food, a memorable experience and a beautiful interior is hard. Essentially the restaurant interior is a blank canvas to tell your brand story, when you integrate your brand into your restaurant design you stand a much better chance of connecting with your customers on a deeper level. The experience you create is what will set you apart from your competitors and encourages your customers to come back for more.

First Impressions – First impressions are often the part of the experience that stay with the customer long after they leave. Your design should convey exactly what your brand and restaurant exists for, when this is clear and executed well your customer will have much more trust and confidence to come and dine with you.

Your Brand Story – This may sound trivial and ‘on trend’ but this really is the key to ensuring you have not just a restaurant that people will come back to but a brand that people fall in love with and want to be a part of. The most influential and successful hospitality brands are those that are developed based on the brand’s core values and purpose, they encapsulate the essence of the brand and tell their brand story.

Interior Concept – An important step when designing a restaurant is to create clarity around the vision for your space, ideally this design concept should be aligned with your overall brand. When thinking about the interior concept, think about the overall mood and atmosphere you want to create for the customers, your research should be guided around staying true to your brand and keeping the customer at the heart of the experience.

Spatial planning – Restaurant floor planning is essential to the design of a restaurant, spatial planning is all about streamlining the operation and function of the space. How well a restaurant functions is down to the accuracy and efficiency of a well developed general arrangement, the floor planning process needs to be meticulous and take into consideration the entrance, waiting stations, dining zones, bar and countertop, kitchen, back of house and restrooms.

Furniture, Fixtures & Equipment – FF&E is integral to the look and feel of the interior as well as the functionality of the space and consequently has a big impact on the guests experience. Try to be consistent with your furniture style and colour choices to keep it coherent and recognisable to the brand. You need to be maximising the space you have, depending on the size of the restaurant you may want to consider a mixture of seating options.