The restaurant business has always been a popular industry, and it will paradoxically continue to be, although it has one of the highest failing rates; around 60 percent fail within a year and 80 percent close prior their fifth year. Depending on the location chosen, this rate could go as high as 90 percent for the first year. With already over 1 million independent restaurants in the US only, being able to set your brand and design concept apart from the competition has never been more important.
Restaurant concept design and development is a complex process and bringing together all the different facets is one of the biggest challenges any restaurateur is likely to face. The thorough understanding of the conceptual design framework is extremely crucial whether you are starting up a new operation or want to revamp your existing restaurant.
1. Developing Your Concept
Developing your concept can take anywhere from a few weeks to six months depending on your creative team members and your experience at creating similar projects. The concept development is significantly more than just defining the food served, the service, the interior design, or simply put, what your business is going to look like when finished.
Conceptualising goes way beyond that, as it involves a whole host of other interconnected considerations such as vision, value proposition and differentiation point, industry research and innovation, design, branding and marketing, management and culinary team, strategy, financial modelling and much more. All this compositional mishmash should be brought together in perfect hom*ogeneity and harmony. Success or failure depends on that synergy. Unfortunately, many operators skip or confuse the concept design with the theme and décor of their restaurant.
2. Setting Your Restaurant Apart
Setting your restaurant apart from the competition is all about creating your differentiation point. At its best, for many start uppers, the element of “differentiation” is to mimicking a particular restaurant they have in mind as a “role model” and implementing it by changing one or two components of its concept. That is not exactly what we call innovation, right? That “competitive advantage” is worthless and eventually will go down in a ball of flames.
"If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete." Jack Welch
Unless you have a unique and sustainable competitive advantage, the restaurant is destined to fail sooner or later. Generally sooner. If your competitive advantage is replicable, then you do not have one. And as genius-ly quoted by the legendary Jack Welch "If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete." It’s too expensive, to learn it the hard way.
So the main issue in such competitive and copyable industry is not just to create a unique selling proposition. But one proposition that delivers and stands strong, even if someone else replicates your concept few blocks away from you, even if your manager or chef has left to open a similar restaurant, even if your competition adapts to what you offer, even all the other ifs out there.
As a blueprint strategy at this point or an ideal approach would be to select a strategic niche and design an experience focused on the needs and desires of your target customer. That demands creating and testing new ideas through a mix of variables and scenarios within your business model and its viability in the marketplace.
3. Defining Your Customer
Creating a concept and then trying to find the right people to match it, is increasingly something that fades. From an innovation perspective, the other way around creates a stronger point of differentiation and a long-lasting competitive advantage. Market insight and analysis plays a great role in the overall process. It gives you a clear, unbiased picture of what the landscape looks like.
Briefly, as this calls for an in-depth analysis, the best way to start your creative part and niche down your concept, is to begin from the end. Just jump and visualise your customer sitting at that restaurant table. First of all, who is she/he? Or even better who you magically desire to be at that table? What does he like? Dislike? What appeals him? Why is he ever going to choose to sit at that table? What does he need or you can offer to match the experience he is seeking? What would be that “wow” element he would love to experience again and again? And naturally, he wouldn't be able to find it anywhere else?
These are just a few hints to spark your creative thinking. If you have a clear identification of your customer, his personality, his needs, then you can find a strategic niche to successfully positioning your restaurant. Helpful questions at this stage would be anything that brings into questioning anything given and predicts future needs. Think creatively, outside of the box, be bold, break the norms! It's a high-risk industry. You need to take risks if you want to survive.
4. Designing Your Restaurant
There are literally hundreds of different steps involved in the design of a standalone restaurant, and your concept will drive most of them. Having a clear concept and a strong platform to support it, is more likely to move you through the design process with greater ease and encounter fewer hurdles in the future. It is critical to get this aspect right and set in stone before you head onto the architectural outlay and the business of construction.
Another important component of the design is the sensorial element. Any high-quality restaurant design should provoke the emotional engagement of all five senses - sight, smell, touch, sound, and taste. The more your restaurant design allows for these to be brought together in a synergistic way, the stronger the brand experience will be.
Besides the engagement and the ambiance, particular attention should be given to the functionality and ergonomic design of the restaurant as well. Although every project is different, here are some basic design considerations to take into account:
- What are the space requirements for your concept?
- How many square feet per person?
- How big does your kitchen/bar need to be?
- What is the best ergonomic flow considering space and menu offering?
- Have you identified all crucial activities and hotspots?
- How smooth and functional is the restaurant workflow?
- Have you catered for personnel space, supported areas, storage, etc.?
- Have you provided for those with disabilities?
5.The Crucial Costs
Probably one of the first things that any restaurant development needs to nail down is the cost. Either it is a small casual or an upscale fine dining restaurant, the concept will be once again your guiding light for location, size and theme.
The start-up costs can range from a few hundred dollars per square foot to several thousand depending on the type of the restaurant you are putting together. An average spectrum could be estimated at $150-$200 per square foot, or if you'd prefer at $3,000-$4,000 per seat. Into that, you need to factor in the price of the restaurant design which can be anything up to 10 percent of the construction budget.
Anyhow costs can escalate quickly and be extremely difficult to gauge if your concept has ambiguities. It is a fact that many restaurants die before their launching day and prime reason of the early breakdowns is the miscalculation of the opening expenses. Although there is no magic formula to calculate the money needed, a clear concept prepares you to plan and keep control of your budget.
6. Getting the Right Team in Place
In hospitality, people are the most substantial and foremost asset! No restaurant is going to succeed unless it has the right people in the right places. People run the show! It really is that simple. Thus, identifying the right people to represent your business requires a thoughtful and rigorous selection process altogether.
But what does it mean the right people? How do you choose the right people anyway? Choosing the right skills? Or the right mindset? How do you set the right criteria for hiring? In fact, the right people for your restaurant, mean the right people for your concept, your values, your brand, your customer. People with the proper skills and mindset to deliver the customer experience of your concept. They also must share your values and be willing to engage in the vision of your new restaurant. Everyone, from the front of house employees and managers to the chefs and dishwashers, needs to reflect your brand in the most positive way.
7. Growing Your Brand
So what's your brand personality? Even though there is a big buzz around the branding phenomenon, the phrase “spoken by many, understood by few” is something that captures the restaurant business reality perfectly. There is a widespread perception that the logo and colours is all you need for brand creation. As exceptional as your logo may be, you still need a great deal more than that. So let's start!
Your brand demands a personality. No design concept worth its salt unless it has a clear, defined identity. That’s not just your name, and what you look like - the logo above the door - but it's your story, the quality or type of food you deliver, the customer service you believe in, the values and ethos that you want your customers to share with you.
Your brand needs to have integrity. That means you must develop a clear set of promises for customers and deliver on them. Trustworthy brands demonstrate integrity and truthfulness in everything they do. The loyalty of your patrons and the respect of your employees is established by living up to expectations at all times.
Your brand, more than anything, needs consistency. Building your brand has become more critical than ever. However, a brand doesn't just happen overnight. It requires time to shape how your customers perceive your business and what you represent. Consistency in delivering the brand promise will help you build loyalty among your clientele.
8. Marketing Your Restaurant Concept
Creating a restaurant from scratch, as we say, is part artistry, part science and 200 percent marketing.
All your decisions about restaurant concept design and development need to be viewed through the prism of marketing.
Having a shiny new restaurant that stands out from the crowd is all well and good, but your challenge is always to reach out to your customers and draw them in. And keeping them in! This will be extremely helpful as the marketing integration will be already at the core of your business and will help to position successfully your restaurant within your target market.
Every stage of development requires you to make the right marketing decisions, and that’s imperative if you want to be successful. Among others this includes:
- Creating the right images that reflect your restaurant concept.
- Building a community around your brand.
- Engaging in areas where your customers are hanging out – whether that’s on social media, places your clientele tends to visit or using targeted advertising.
- Leveraging your best brand ambassadors to spread the word of your restaurant.
9. Creating a Memorable Experience
Creating memorable experiences, in reality, means creating an emotional connection with your customers.
It's all about perspective. Amazing restaurant concepts intrigue emotions by sharing a unique spirit and a feeling that goes beyond the basics. By focusing only on food quality, service and design, you have already set the bar quite low for an industry of high risk and huge competition. An amazing burger is an amazing burger. An amazing service and design as well. However, it is the emotional part of the experience that will light up the magic and make the difference.
It's all about details. Your brand encompasses the whole of your design from the plates and cutlery you use, the way you set out your seating, the work you put into conveniences, the way your staff communicates and so on. In other words, everything is linked. Every single detail contributes and influences the atmosphere and energy of your restaurant. If your concept design elements are a confused mixture of different things, the impact on the customer service will be identical.
It's all about atmosphere. That means that the scents wafting through the air into the dining area, the lighting you use to create just the right ambiance, the music selection, the taste and visual appeal of the food, or the spectacular views that are on offer, reflect the personality and the soul of the restaurant.
10. Understanding the Key of Success
All in all, the key resolution of restaurant design and development is to reflect upon the common denominator that affects and influences every aspect along the way: the significance of conceptual design and its business model landscape.
We all know the "location, location, location" quote, but if the concept isn't there, nothing is going to save you. The concept is the all-encompassing tool that drives all activities and leads every single decision, long before birth, along the grand opening and beyond. Everything starts and ends with that; from your location and target clientele to cuisine, ambiance, menu, to employees, and managers, to branding, marketing, and customer experience. In a sense, the concept acts as the spine, around which your restaurant business operates and incorporates the vision, value, and ecosystem of your "brain child" brought to life.
Undoubtedly experience has shown that there are no copy paste processes and prototypes for opening a restaurant. Complexities and particularities in this sector are just unlimited. A restaurant of only 50K in the middle of nowhere makes a killing, while a $10M restaurant startup fails when you wrongly believe in owning a unique and sustainable concept or assuming you have the knowledge to cope with industry's challenges. In such variable competitive business, failure makes no exceptions. No matter how big or small your investment, it is the concept design and development that sets a solid ground for building and establishing a successful restaurant. Ironically enough though, the concept development process in most cases is neglected, ignored or underestimated. Jumping directly into the architectural design and construction process without having a clear defined and tested prototype is similarly like closing your eyes while driving and wishing for the best.
In Conclusion
The concept development is a daunting process even for the professionals, let alone the amateurs. Bringing together all the different strands of the restaurant design elements and getting all that through the development stage requires an in-depth understanding of the market and the restaurant ecosystem in general. The misconception of easy business, easy money, and a lot of fun is just one of the most common mistakes made by aspiring restaurateurs. Understanding the challenges of the landscape you are about to enter and developing a realistic plan to make it happen requires hard work, dedication, and personal engagement. Above all an endless passion for your business! As a coherent concept and a perfect business plan give you indeed a strong foundation to begin your adventure. Though, implementing that on an ongoing basis and on an evolving landscape demands serious skills and love for what you do. At the end of the day, it is that passion and love that will push you ahead through your difficult days and challenging periods.
