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3 Tips for Maximizing Restaurant Business During Summer

With peaks and valleys in business throughout the year, restaurant owners must find a way to maximize earning power during their busiest months in order to cover tougher periods in which they lose money.

As a general rule in North America, restaurants are far busier in the summertime than in the wintertime. This is mainly due to winter weather conditions discouraging people from going out and partly due to the holiday season encouraging people to stay home with loved ones. While marketing and promotions to encourage people to frequent a restaurant during winter can have a small impact on changing this trend, the money put into such campaigns does not always justify itself. Some habits, such as staying home during the wintertime, are just too deeply culturally ingrained in us, and advertising’s effects on changing them tends to be limited.

Rather than trying to squeeze more out of the winter months, restaurant owners might be better served trying to take advantage of the busy summer months. So, here are a few tips on maximizing your business during summer:

1) People tend to venture out to eat far more in summer than in winter. Children are out of school, tourism increases and more daylight can mean longer business days for restaurants that cater to a daytime crowd. With that in mind, there are three groups to target with promotions during the summer months – families with children, tourists, and the twilight happy hour crowd. By coming up with your marketing campaigns with these groups in mind during the summer, you will find that your advertising is much more focused and effective. (more…)

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3 Tips for Maximizing the Space of a Small Venue

Designing a small restaurant or pub can require creative thinking to make the most of a limited space; knowing how to select the right furniture and layout is essential.

Small restaurants can have very big advantages for entrepreneurs, but can also present them with very difficult design challenges. A smaller venue brings with it lower costs and less overhead. The price of rent, as well as utilities such as heating and cooling, can be significantly lower. A much smaller wait staff and kitchen staff is also an advantage of a small restaurant or pub, and initial design costs will often be significantly lower in a smaller space.

Choosing the right layout and restaurant furniture for a small venue is essential to a customer’s impression of the establishment. A small venue done right can come across as cozy, intimate and comfortable, whereas a badly designed small venue will seem cluttered, crowded and unpleasant. The following are three tips on how to choose the right furniture and layout to make a restaurant or pub a big hit in a small package.

1) Utilize bar and counter seating

Bar and counter seating is a great way to get a lot of people seated at your establishment, while still offering wait staff and customers ample space to move around. A bar placed on one side of the room adjacent to the kitchen with high bar stools is great not only for spacing – it also can establish a venue as a place to congregate in the neighborhood. Customers who might normally just be ordering food and soft drinks are much more likely to order alcohol while eating at the bar, which will definitely boost profits.

Counter seating along the restaurant’s front windows is also a great way to save some space, and offer diners who value their privacy an appropriate seating option. Seating with a street view is pleasant for diners in your restaurant and can serve to pull foot traffic in from outside.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2) Install banquet seating

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Restaurant Remodeling Tips

restaurant furniture and design

Restaurant remodeling can be very expensive but if you want the best there will be the need to pay for it. It can be done for less of a cost by choosing less expensive items but there are times when it will be best to buy long lasting items. This way there will be no need to have to go through kitchen remodeling for some time.

A remodeling can make such a difference to a restaurant and not least it can push up its revenue. However, in these hard economic times it’s not always a good idea to invest in a large, expensive remodeling.
Star off by deciding on a sum that you can realistically afford and see what is available for that amount. When remodeling, decide who it is being done for. If you don’t plan to expand your clientele base then you can invest in a minor change that will refresh the existing decor without having to spend too much and without having to worry that your customers will not like what you have done.

Decide how much needs to be done and then what order to do it in. If there needs to be a complete overhaul it will be best to start with the redevelopment before the new equipment is brought in. This could be a new floor or new furniture and in the worst case scenario may even need new pipes fitting.

Once the reconstruction has taken place it will be time to decide on the items you want and don’t want. With a restaurant remodeling there will be plenty of scope when it comes to choosing new items. There are certain things to keep in mind when remodeling a dining venue and one may seem very superficial but it will be best to see what kind of restaurant furniture your competitors are using. Another good idea is to ask your workers and your clients what furniture they would like to see in your venue and try to incorporate that into your new design. (more…)

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Restaurant Furniture Help and Advice

3D Booth DesignerOver the past year we have given quite a few tips about marketing and managing a successful restaurant. However, designing a restaurant in such a way as to be both comfortable and efficient is a hard thing to do.

We have written a few articles about Feng Shui for restaurant and how to use it for our advantage but there are some even more basic aspects that need to be taken into account.  Things that at first seem simple and obvious and are therefore often overlooked. We are talking about correctly choosing the furniture to your dining venue.

For example, when you buy restaurant tables, it is often cheaper and easier to buy table tops and table bases separately rather than buying the table in one piece (shipping charges alone are worth buying the parts separately). The only problem with this is knowing which base goes with which top. You can buy the strongest base but it might mean that you are paying more than you have to. And although for one table this won’t affect the price much, if you need a large number of items the price adds up to a significant amount.

This is why on Affordable Seating ‘s site you can find a number of tools that will help you in choosing exactly the items you need. You can find there a diagram that helps you match the table size to the number of diners and another one that will tell you the base size that best matches that top. (more…)

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New at Affordable Seating – Restaurant Furniture Sets

restaurant furniture setAffordable Seating.net have just added to their list of products some great restaurant furniture sets. This means that you will be able to order all your restaurant furniture in one go without having to spend extra time looking for matching items.

The sets include metal or wood restaurant chairs, matching bar stools or dining booths and table tops and bases, and are based on the company’s customers purchases.

Even if you aren’t looking to buy ready made sets we recommend going over them to get ideas of how to create your own sets and to see what other  restaurant owners are looking for.

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Fun Ideas for Your Child Centric Restaurant

If you are running a family friendly restaurant that focuses on children, then you will want to make sure that you have everything that a child centric restaurant should have. Here are a few fun ideas that you might want to incorporate into your restaurant.

What screams fun for kids? Games are an obvious choice. You can have many different types of games, from video games to skee ball. You will want to make sure that there are games for children of different ages, and it might be a good idea to throw in something that the adults are going to like as well.

Seating is something that you need to consider carefully. Remember that in a restaurant that is specifically for children, they are going to be running around. Make sure that you have enough space to allow for that. Restaurant booths will help to easily divide the space and will allow for more “running around” space. You will also need to make sure that you have seating that is right for both children and adults. Booster seats, for the younger kids to sit on, are a great idea and they are something that you do not want to overlook.

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