Renovating Revamps Business

From Restaurants USA magazine

Food may no longer be as important to diners as the setting in which it is served. Restaurants are renovating more often to keep up with consumers’ changing tastes and desire for excitement.

After 12 years in business, Guiseppe Bruno and his brother Gerardo decided it was time to give their Manhattan restaurant Sistina a new look. “We felt like we needed a change,” says Bruno. “We felt like we were falling asleep, and we wanted to get excited again. We also wanted to update with the times and make sure our clientele was still happy.”

Plans were in place by February, and the redesign was scheduled to begin in July. Bruno began excitedly telling his customers about the changes in store for the coming fall, but he was surprised to learn that many of his regulars didn’t share his enthusiasm.

“We started testing the ground and telling our customers in February. But they really didn’t want us to do the redesign,” says Bruno. “A lot of people were disappointed; they didn’t want us to change. Sistina was a very simple restaurant, and they liked it the way it was.”

So Bruno stopped telling his customers. “We wanted to do it,” he says. “We wanted to do it for us and for our customers. So we stopped talking about it and just decided to send out letters before we closed down.”

Now, six months after reopening, Bruno says everyone loves the change. His only wish, he says, is that he had done it earlier. “The customers were worried that we were going to change the place they loved,” says Bruno. “But sometimes you have to change and be innovative. You have to do what you know is right.”

What Bruno knew was that the industry is changing rapidly. Twenty years ago an article about design would have had no place in a restaurant magazine. The design of a restaurant had little to do with consumers choice of an eating place, and operators were more concerned about food than about facility design.

“It used to be that the most important thing was food, the second-most-important thing was service, and the third-most-important thing was the design or concept,” says Spiros Zakas, CEO and director of design for Zakaspace, based in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

But those days are gone. “Today, the most important thing is the design and concept,” says Zakas. “Consumers want to go to a place that’s fun and nice, [and] they still want decent service. Unfortunately, the least important thing is the food. Its all been turned upside down.”

Overhauls in overdrive

Driven by changing consumer demands and increased consumer expectations formed by high-capitalization chains, the frequency of redesigning is picking up. Most operators, consultants and designers agree that the pace of redesign has increased in the past decade, but there are a number of competing theories as to why. Although the majority of experts agree that increased competition has forced restaurants to redesign more often, the agreement ends there.

Zakas, whose design credits include Michael Jordans Restaurant in Chicago, the Atlanta Fish Market, and about 300 other foodservice projects located predominantly in the South and the Midwest, has followed the industry closely for more than two decades and believes that large restaurant companies have redefined industry standards.

“There are now a ton of big companies in the restaurant business,” says Zakas. “They are the ones that are pushing the pace. These big boys have come into the picture, and they are merchandising like crazy. TheyÕve got these wonderful ads on TV, and people are flocking into these places because they like the environment and the service is good. The big boys change their interiors about every four to five years, and everybody else has to keep up with them. The poor little guy has really got to go out there and hire professional people to help him remain competitive.”

Dan Bendall, vice president of the Maryland and New York design division of Cini-Little International, Inc., agrees that “the proliferation of chains has affected the pace of redesign.” But Bendall believes other factors have had a significant impact. “I think the pace of redesign is a function of less new construction,” he says. “Good locations are more difficult to come across, so instead of moving, an operator redesigns.” Perhaps most important, “the trends in the industry are changing so rapidly that operations have to redesign every five to seven years to keep up.”

Marve Cooper, president of Chicago-based Marve Cooper Design, also thinks the increasing pace of redesign is market-driven. But Cooper sees the increased pace as a result not of trends but of “quickly changing customer demand.”

“The customers are speaking for themselves,” says Cooper. “In the Õ80s, nobody listened to what the customer wanted. But today, more people are eating out more often, so they are less infatuated with the idea of restaurants. Today, they look at eating out as another support service in their life. So people want to see a reflection of their own values in a restaurant, and they won’t pay for what they don’t want. They want to be comfortable, they want a good, wholesome meal, and they want restaurants to reflect these core values” in the food, the prices and the design.

The new marketplace

The concept of the restaurant as theater and stage began to emerge in the Õ80s. Patrons wanted to see themselves as characters in a carefully scripted fantasy. Although consumers are less willing to pay for those fantasies now, many elements of the theater have been integrated into today’s restaurant design.

Display kitchens have become an integral component of the modern restaurant. The display kitchen has evolved into much more than just center stage. It has become a highly tuned merchandising system that plays to the core values of clientele.

“Today, people want to see the kitchen,” says Zakas, who counsels most of his redesign clients to tear down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room whenever possible. “People want to see what they are ordering. From hot-dog stands to white-tablecloth restaurants, from McDonald’s to Morton’s, you can see the product right in front of you. Because of the consumer, the old concept of the kitchen being behind the wall has gone away.”

According to Bendall, “the majority of restaurants now have some sort of a display or merchandising element to them. From the customer’s point of view, there is a trend toward healthy, fresh foods. [Diners] want to see a fresh steak or a fresh piece of fish placed on a broiler. On the part of operators, an open kitchen is great merchandising -what you see with your eyes sells.”

Beyond the open kitchen

Open kitchens represent a major step toward a design-driven, marketing-conscious industry, but Bendall doesn’t think the concept has reached its logical conclusion. The design of restaurants for the 21st century is still evolving. “I think you’ll see the display-kitchen theme carried way past what we’ve seen,” says Bendall. “Diners and kitchens are becoming more intermingled, and we’ll start to see a lot more of the marketplace concept.”