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In the mood: Does your furniture set the right tone?
By Lucie Grys
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Today’s dining experience has evolved into an entertainment event, and setting the right mood is what it’s all about
Creating a sense of mood in a restaurant with the placement, type and scale of furniture helps to set customers’ expectations of their experience. With a large base of food industry clients, John Smale, President of Pace Design Inc. in Belleville, Ontario, is incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to what works and what doesn’t in creating ambiance.
“Mood and environment is everything because we are really selling entertainment and food,” he explains. “The theme has to be married to the décor food and the advertising in order to create and sell a unified product.”
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Marty Hirschberg, who heads a leading design firm, Hirschberg Design Group, agrees. “Mood sets the stage – but without the food and the delivery, it’s a promise unfulfilled,” he says. “Furniture gives clues or signals to the customer to eat quickly or slowly, whether the restaurant is quiet or boisterous, the type and price of the food, whether there is table service or counter service. Furniture precludes behaviour and creates a setting of what is to be.”
Dealing with Dollars
When designing a restaurant and developing a budget, both Smale and Hirschberg believe that quality should steer decisions. Targeting your demographic and ensuring you create usable space and seating is also important. High-backed banquettes are increasingly popular in fine dining establishments, nightclubs and lounges because they create private spaces ideal for conducting business meetings or having romantic dinners. Banquettes also work in family-style and more casual environments because they help keep children contained when the parents sit at the outer ends. Moreover, a wall bench provides optimal seating arrangements since you can seat deuces, or couples, and can also push tables together to seat groups of four or more.
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Fast food or quick service restaurants have typically used cluster seating that was affixed to the floor and bolted together. Today, designers are trying to cultivate more of a café feel and have opted to use tables and chairs that are movable to create flexibility for patrons. Corporate landlords in malls and food courts are also realizing that great looking quick service restaurants are good for business. No longer relegated to the basement, food courts and public eating areas are quickly becoming a major draw for customers. Landlords are demanding changes in design and are triggering some companies to redefine their visual brand in order to stay in business.
Testing for Quality
Smale emphasizes that designers should suggest pieces that will withstand the test of time – and can easily be repaired instead of thrown out in the bin. “It’s hard when setting a restaurant budget because the kitchen is the heart of the house, but riding on its heels is the furniture,” he says. He also encourages owners and designers to have a furniture replacement program in place to either replace, repair or reupholster pieces so that the establishment will remain well maintained.
For budget-minded restaurant owners and for smaller start-ups, restaurant auctions are ideal places to source quality furniture. Designers should advise clients to look at furniture that is built with a solid frame and select fabrics that rate well in a rub test and have good wear abrasion. And while shelling out money to enlist the support of a designer might seem like a big expense, a designer, with his or her training and expertise, can not only help you create the mood you want, but can also save you money doing it.
Explains Hirschberg: “Good restaurant design can last up to eight years. If you are too trendy in what you select in furniture and mood, it’s gone quickly. Design can bring people in – but the experience of the food and the mood brings them back.”
Lucie Grys is a freelance lifestyle writer and editor based in Toronto, Ontario. For more information, visit www.luciegrys.com.
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