So, you have made up your menu of tasty dishes and placed your prices well within the limits of other restaurants near your chosen location, so you are neither considered too cheap to try nor too expensive. You have even decided on the best working hours to open in order to catch the most trade.
You might think this ticks every box, but besides offering an additional take-out service for collection or delivery from your premises, you will also have to provide the best service and a highly desirable place for your customers to spend their mealtime and their money.
# 1 Include a touch of luxury
For most people eating out is a luxury rather than a necessity, so you should extend this feeling of luxury to the surroundings that your customers will be experiencing. Seating should be functional but also comfortable; the longer your customers are sitting in your restaurant, the more time they have to spend additional money.
Besides comfortable seating, you should also include some artwork for the walls as well as maybe some large sculptures as conversation pieces. Getting involved with local artists and allowing them to showcase their work could provide you with beautiful pieces while providing the artists a platform to receive orders, commissions, or sell the work that you have on show.
Of course, if you would rather have your own pieces on display, you will need to ensure they are of good quality and not available in high street stores to not look cheap. You can use crate shipping to get your original find back to your restaurant. Undoubtedly, you should make sure that any courier company you use to send your items in a crate is insured and experienced.
#2 Make your layout more intimate
You should also think about making your layout more intimate for your customers. Although having a large open plan feel could provide you with more tables, providing private areas created with shelving, plants, or booths will make your customers feel more comfortable. You will also have to make sure that you get your color scheme right, as well as the lighting and music.
Dark, rich colors with intimate lighting can create a safe, private bubble around your customers, while investing in luxury seating and fabrics can reduce the amount of noise bouncing around. Playing soft music in the background is a necessity for customer privacy. However, you need to ensure it is at a volume where your customers can talk without feeling that they must shout to be heard. Overloud pounding pop music is supposed to draw people in but isn’t necessarily to everyone’s taste, and not such a good idea when trying to create a luxurious image in your restaurant.
Final thoughts
Many customers do not just peruse the menu when they are thinking of visiting a restaurant but also take into consideration the overall look of the place. You may very well find that they look at the restaurant before even checking out the menu, which is certainly true of those considered a walk-in trade. This, of course, can be from photos on your website if your potential customers are not physically standing with their noses pressed up to your front window. If these visitors do not like what they see, they will invariably find somewhere else.