Article by Andy Andrews

What is queue space? Is it really that important?Well queue space is the floor area in your restaurant dedicated to having customers wait. Wait before talking to the hostess. You get the drift now. Queue means to form in a line whilst waiting. So queue space is the area you dedicate to this. The thoughts contained in this post have been acquired over my 20 years of encounter designing all sorts of restaurants restaurants. Like many issues in life you may in no way get credit for some thing you did appropriate only criticised should you do it wrong. Like clean dishes at a restaurant it can be just expected and you don’t get points for doing it appropriate. In case you get queue space right it will go unnoticed, should you get it wrong people will commence out their dining encounter at you restaurant in a poor mood. Below is the best way to get it appropriate.

First realize how your queue space will likely be employed. This is determined by the sort of restaurant you might be running. Are you a fast service [the fancy term for quickly food] or casual dining or fine dining or something else. Fast service will demand a clear line or lines where folks wait to order along with a clear path to allow individuals to go to the tables following they have ordered. In numerous cases this space will be the center of the restaurant. Casual dining usually function on a very first come very first serve basis and don’t take reservation. In that case you’ll require space and some seating to accommodate a group of people equal to 10% to 25% of your seating. You calculate this by understanding how lengthy it takes you to turn table, how lengthy individuals will wait and how many seat you have. Fine Dining usually works off reservations and won’t demand more that a few folks waiting at an time. The point here would be to profile how you would like your clients to behave from the time they walk within your front door to the time they sit down to eat.

As soon as you describe the behavior you are attempting to produce within your consumers it really is time to design some thing. Inside the style phase of developing your plan draw a line around the space where diners are expected to wait to be seated or give their order. Then confirm if this space large sufficient to hold your restaurants biggest surge of customers. You do this by taking the square footage and dividing by the maximum number of individuals, the quantity you get must be some where around 7 square foot per person give or take. I would not go below 5 or much more that 9. Now somewhat crowding may be a great thing it tells men and women ‘business is great, this place need to be effective, the cook ought to be talented but don’t let it become uncomfortable. The look at the traffic flow into, out of and by means of this space. Ask your self would a crowd of buyers clog up the works, can the public still get in and simply get by way of to meet other diners?

There you go a basic 2 step process, to get no credit what so ever. The design ideas for restaurants discussed in this write-up are universal and must be applied to all restaurants regardless of restaurant kind, whether or not you might be designing for fast food, a bare-bones restaurant, a plain sit down diner or a full-service restaurant. This isn’t an post about restaurant trends for owners, designer and architects. I have avoided matters of taste and focused on unchanging truths of design and architecture that all restaurants share. This is intended for restaurant owners, food service professionals, architects and designers, but the restaurant public can get pleasure from this also. Both the entrepreneur intending to start a brand new restaurant or the existing restaurant owner looking into a remodeling effort ought to locate these restaurant design suggestions useful to assist construct and maintain their restaurant organization. Good restaurant design is the best kind of marketing. Design often matters even when it goes unnoticed.

About the Author

Burt Andrews is an Architect with over 20 years of experience in designing restaurants and retail stores. You can read more of his restaurant design ideas at his blog about restaurant architecture. He is a principal at Larson and Darby Group in charge of the St. Charles, IL office.

Chef/owner Daniel Boulud talks about his flagship 4-star restaurant on NYC’s Upper East Side. Get more info on Daniel on Savory Cities: www.savorycities.com