Mismatch between quality of food and design of room.

There really is no easy way to correct this because someone thinks their design is brilliant. The food is great but the design of the room is horrible.

People design matters.

Small plate stress

Ariel shares the stress of side dishes,

Sharing food is stressful. Before the food arrives there's an obligation to make a mutual decision on what to order. I like to avoid this and get my own thing. But with small plates, that's conspicuously anti-social. So I'm forced to engage in the "what do you want to share" conversation. Invariably, whenever this takes place, I find myself repeating: "I can't eat that."

Now we're faced with two choices. Order twice as many dishes and go into debt or choose the food I can eat which naturally tilts the order in my favour and establishes a hostile tone for the dinner. And how do you possibly know if you've "ordered enough". As soon as the waiter or waitress asks this I become anxious. What will be enough? And leaving the menu behind "just in case" doesn't help. By the time we know it's not enough, it's too late.

Once the anxiety and hostility sets in, the order arrives. I'm forced to eat at an accelerated pace just to get a bite in. Suddenly, what was once a leisurely meal turns into an aggressive eating competition. You have to race through your meal or you'll go home hungry.

There's no way to have a meaningful conversation either because if you're the one talking you lose out. Here's an excerpt from the dialogue between two people sharing small plates:

Do not share dishes, it does not work!

The case for softer chairs and higher prices

Kathleen Parker shares,

Joshua M. Ackerman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sought to answer those questions through a series of psychological experiments. He concluded that an object's texture, hardness and weight influence our judgments and decisions.Again, the obvious: Weight conveys importance ("weighty issues") and hardness is associated with rigidity.

Apparently, we don't have to touch things only with our hands to get a feel for something. Our posteriors are equally receptive to hard-soft messaging. Hence the chair experiment, in which subjects were asked to make offers on a car. The dealer would refuse the first offer and a second offer immediately followed.

Those sitting on hard chairs made lower second offers than those sitting on softer chairs.

The power of what you surround yourself with

Tom Peters explains,

The importance of square footage

Square footage matters to the feel of your concept. If you take two footprints one with limited seating and one with ample seating, the larger one will feel right. The smaller footprint does not work. Even with the menu being identical and the staff offering the same level of service as the larger footprint, the perception is that the smaller footprint is lacking.

Nothing will overcome that perception. There is a need for space in the overall feel of any concept.

Connection creates great art.

Jeffrey Tang defines the connection that creates the great art. Does what you do inspire connection?

When Monet brushed color onto canvas, he birthed beautiful paintings into the world. But those paintings didn’t become art until they were put on display, until people looked at them, appreciated them, and in doing so created a connection with them and their painter.

You see, art is about the connection between artist and audience. Whenever you look at a painting or read a book or use a new product, you create that connection – you create art. You participate in the creative process.

Visual cues to the buying decision

Jeffery Pfeffer's post about visual cues and how they influence feelings and purchases.

companies need to be much more thoughtful about how they design and decorate their workspaces, because visual cues influence attitudes and behaviors. Companies should think about what employee behaviors and what customer reactions they desire and then experiment with cues that are likely to invoke them.

The resilent nature of good design!

Are you feeling down there bunky? Well look no further than design. Good Design has rejuvenating properties. Good design can resurrect an old icon, create interest, drive traffic and most important of all, drive transactions.

When things aren't working, change them. Put on a new suit of clothes, paint the place in a different color and add new furniture. Design is indistinguishable from magic.

Table Clutter:

In far too many restaurants, the top of the table looks like a garage in disarray. Managers have elaborate diagrams for what the tabletop should look like. Perhaps, just perhaps there should be nothing on the table when the guest is seated. This allows the guest to peruse the menu without having to rearrange the perfectly diagramed table top plan.

Less is definitely more when we are talking about the tabletop space.

Time for the old Switcharoo

Why change the decor every five years when you can do it daily. Greg Morago's article about
Switch and pop up restaurants explores an emerging trend.

there’s a small segment that has taken change to heart in ways that are dramatic and offbeat. Some might even say kooky.

Switch, a fine-dining establishment at the new Wynn Encore in Las Vegas, pulls a big switcheroo every night. The restaurant transforms itself about every half hour during dinner service: The lighting changes, music changes, and walls go up and down, creating completely new décor and atmosphere. While you’re tucking into your lobster salad, the landscape around you changes in a grand flourish.

Theatrical? Almost beyond. “It’s the difference between good theater and bad theater,” says Wynn’s in-house designer, Roger Thomas, during a recent tour of the space. “We’re creating a dialogue with the customer using scenery, music and lighting

Walk around your restaurant:

2009 is here and it is time to walk around your restaurant again. The new year brings fresh perspectives. The first thing a restaurateur needs to do physically walk around the outside of the restaurant. This is actually something you and your staff should do every day. If there is litter, pick it up. If there is litter on the city street in front of your restaurant, pick it up. The customer walking by will not say, “Oh my, the city is doing a poor job cleaning the street”, they will say “this restaurant does not care.” Keep walking around, are there any physical plant issues that have gone on to long? The customer will only notice the imperfections in your building, not the ten thousand other things you do right. Have you really looked at your building with a critical eye? Ok, time to come in.

Forget that you built and manage the place, walk into your restaurant with fresh eyes. Try to experience what a first time visitor would experience. Smell the smells, hear the sounds, touch the furniture, see the place for the first time and finally taste the tastes.

Heck it is a new year, time for a fresh perspective.

Brand Clarity

Kevin Maney’s post discusses how difficult the tradeoffs are and the dangers for businesses that stray.

“consumers will trade the quality of an experience for the convenience of getting it…

…it's dangerous for a business to try to be both high fidelity and super convenient. It confuses the brand and drags the product or service into a crisis. A prominent example is Starbucks, which began as a high-fidelity experience, and attempted to become high-convenience by flooding the world with outlets. The fidelity and convenience aspects worked at cross-currents and damaged the brand.”

Tea is amazing

Seth Goldman of Honest Tea offers this bit of wisdom in an interview for Knowledge@ Wharton:

“The key is to be different. You know, we never came out with just another "me too" product. From the start, our product was less sweet than what everyone else was offering. And that was why we felt it was relevant, because everything out there was much more like soda than it was like tea. And it's grown. Our differentiation has grown. So now everything we offer is organic. And a great deal of what we offer is also Fair Trade certified. And we'll continue to raise the bar and find new ways to set ourselves apart. But we're too small to compete directly with the big companies on their terms. We have to do it on our terms.”

What is your business model?

Logo design drama:

Every new business agonizes over logo design. Some are truly obsessive. Seth reminds us that your logo is not your brand.

I guess the punchline is: take the time and money and effort you'd put into an expensive logo and put them into creating a product and experience and story that people remember instead.

A good logo is important, however it is nowhere as important has a memorable customer experience.

Drag and Drop Online pizza ordering:

Online ordering is getting more visual with drag and drop functionality. QSR Magazine's article:

. An extensive list of pizza topping graphics allows customers to easily spot their favorite add-ons and the drag and drop functionality makes creating and revising the makeup of a pie order a snap.

"This type of smart and fun technology encourages consumers to beef up their orders, whether it involves adding toppings or even additional pies to their guest check," says Seth Blech, chief technology officer of BigHoller. "Having a positive experience during the order process can play just as important a role in repeat business as the taste of the meal and quality of restaurant service."

The Garden in the Autumn:

I was walking around the neighborhood the other day and I noticed a lot of overgrown gardens. Gardens that were inspiring in the spring, beautiful in the summer, had now become overgrown and unruly in the autumn. Restaurant outdoor cafés take on that haphazard unattended look as the autumnal equinox approaches. Gardens are also a metaphor for your capital improvement projects. Too often a restaurateur will put off changing the design, colors or furniture of a restaurant until the place looks old, tired and totally uninviting. Look around today, is your restaurant clean, updated and fresh?

The Character of your restaurant:

Mary Ellen and I walked into my favorite breakfast joint the other day and I felt the energy in the space was different. The owner greeted us with his usual smile and escorted us to our table. The physical space was the same, the owner was same, the menu was the same and the morning coffee was the same, what was different? The servers, some were faces I recognized others were new. It occurred to me that the servers more than anything else you as a restaurateur can influence affects your customers relationship to the restaurant.

I have posted discussions about the competitive advantages of your people, however this is different. I am talking about design today. The people in your restaurant are part of your design. How they work together, how they mesh with each other and how they compliment each other affects how people feel about the dining experience.

Morning Shadows:

Morning is my favorite time of day. The hope of every new day permeates everything. There is promise in the flowers bloom, there is urgency in the birds flight, there is gentleness in the shadows which fall westward in the morning. The shadows begin by falling westward, then to the northwest, to the north, to the northeast and finally falling eastward as the sun sets.

The play of light and shadows changes your restaurant throughout the day. How does your restaurant feel at 7am, at 12pm, at 3pm, at 6pm, at 9pm? The feeling is influenced by nothing else than the dance of light and shadows.

Elements of Business:

Mary Ellen reminded me that elements of a business are similar to the elements of art or design.

originality of subject matter.

originality of symbolism.

expressive power

interrelation of parts.

arrangement and balance.

color sensitivity.

appropriate use of materials

technical skill

suitability of product or intended use

What are the elements of your restaurant?

The Open for Lunch Dilemma:

Fine Dining restaurants often grapple with the Open for Lunch dilemma because instinctively one can make the assumption that there is an underused asset wasting away. Most who venture from dinner only service into the open for lunch arena discover to their economic chagrin that there is not enough traffic to justify being open. The additional labor cost of a full shift necessary to implement a partial or full menu is rarely recouped. The caveat of course is that if one has significant private dining events to justify a staff at lunch time, then being open for lunch is adjunct. The addition of wait staff is incrementally justified if the kitchen staff is already present and working on prepping and executing a private lunch event.

The basic problem is that most restaurateurs who first try the open for lunch mantra attempt to utilize existing staff in a staggered schedule format, adding only minimal additional staffers. This strategy has the effect of stressing out all the staff as they will be called upon to stretch well beyond physical limits in an ill-fated attempt to minimize cost. Lunch at best represents 10-15% of dinner revenue and too often utilizes precious resources in fashion that is not optimal.

The best alternative for the dilemma is to open earlier for dinner, perhaps 3pm. This affords those who seek a late lunch and those who seek an early dinner the opportunity to sample your offerings.