While ensuring you serve wonderfully made food in your eatery might be your main priority as a restaurateur, the menu items aren’t the only aspect of a restaurant that can contribute to customer satisfaction and help you gain returning patrons. Your restaurant’s design, decoration, and atmosphere can influence how much you sell, too. Considering the essential roles your restaurant’s interior and exterior can play in creating an excellent customer experience for your diners, described below are ways you can make your restaurant more inviting.
Consider refrigeration and storage needs when creating a floor plan for your restaurant.
Your storage and refrigeration areas and kitchen are areas your customers won’t see, but they’re crucial to your restaurant’s productivity and efficiency. Consider getting a restaurant equipment lease to finance superior kitchen equipment to generate profitability. Whether you’re just starting your restaurant or seeking to expand an existing eatery and upgrade its equipment, leasing commercial kitchen equipment is an excellent way to protect and preserve your business’s capital. Coming to satisfactory payment terms for a lease agreement with the best lender enables you to get the high-quality refrigerator, freezer, ice machine, oven, stove, grill, fryer, planetary mixer, dishwasher, and storage shelves needed to make your restaurant fully functional.
Once you determine how much space you’ll use for refrigeration and storage, how to make these areas easily accessible and secure, and how to ensure they remain unseen by customers, you can plan your dining room accordingly. Consider places where customers may not want to sit, like near the kitchen or restroom. Try sitting at every table to determine if there’s something that bothers you that might bother customers, such as feeling a draft of cold air or lacking enough legroom. If needed, rearrange the furniture or add a partition to make the seating in the dining room more suitable.
Focus on details that can enhance your restaurant’s ambiance.
Recent data shows that while customers in the U.S. frequented fast food restaurants more in the past year during the COVID-19 pandemic, they reported higher satisfaction with full-service restaurants. Full-service establishments are in increased demand among patrons, possibly due to restaurant closures and stay-at-home orders last year. Respond to this by decorating your restaurant in ways that will impress eager patrons. Focus on adding decorations and details that can vamp up the look and feel of your restaurant. Implement inviting features like window frame seating and bar stools. For the walls, consider mirrors, as they can reflect light and give off the impression your restaurant is bigger, or invest in wall art. Through wall art, you can forge a relationship between your business and the community by showcasing work by local artists.
Additionally, greenery, plants, and flowers can boost the atmosphere. Plants are portable and versatile and can enhance the design of any restaurant regardless of its cuisine and theme. Potted and hanging plants can give your eatery’s interior a fresh vibe. If you offer patio seating, consider getting outdoor plants, too. The best outdoor and indoor plants come from a nursery run by professional horticulturists. A superior nursery can get you all the perennials, petunias, daylilies, daffodils, or hydrangeas you want. Keep them impressive to customers by giving them as much sun, water, and maintenance as they need, whether they require little care or more attention.
Draw attention to your restaurant with an eye-opening entrance.
Your restaurant’s exterior is just as important as its interior, as it’s what your customers see first. Just as a home with more curb appeal—visual attractiveness seen from the street—is more likely to attract buyers, an attractive restaurant is more likely to draw in clientele. Increase your restaurant’s curb appeal with bold colors that stand out in the neighborhood, a neon sign with your business’s name, or a mural around the entrance. Giving your restaurant a more attractive and unique exterior is a surefire way to pique your customers’ interest and invite them inside.
