Opening a new restaurant? Odds are good that you’ve drowning in tasks that you have to take care of before opening day. Hiring a talented chef, staffing the kitchen, crafting a menu and hiring your front of house crew are all going to take up a lot of your attention. However, there are other considerations that are probably in greater need of your personal attention. 

One of these is the internal décor. It’s easy for restaurant operators to forget that the restaurant experience is about more than delicious cuisine. It’s also about being comfortable and relaxed in an attractive atmosphere – the kind of place where you can take your family out for a treat or meet with a client for a business discussion. Food is central to the restaurant experience, but it is certainly not everything. 

Once you’ve hired that executive chef, let them worry with staffing the kitchen and working on the menu. Likewise, once the front of the house manager is on the roster, let them assemble a team of servers, hostesses and bartenders for you. Of course, you’ll reserve the final word for yourself in every situation. But that doesn’t mean that you need to trouble yourself by playing an active role in the planning phase. 

Once you have sufficiently freed yourself up, ask yourself how you are going to approach furnishing your restaurant. The big fine-dining joints – as in the multi-pound ventures – will charter an interior designer to handle this, but smaller restaurants may not be able to afford to do this. With this in mind, this is an area that the restaurant owner is going to need to take the lead on. 

Remember: the furnishings in any restaurant need to look the part, but they also need to be comfortable. That’s a harder order to fill than you might think, and finding the right options is going to require some shopping around. But before you do that, take some time to consider the following tips:

Make use of outdoor areas.

Patrons love the opportunity to go outdoors, especially in the spring and autumn when the weather is crisply cool, but still comfortable. Any outdoor furnishings will need to be all-weather. Start your shopping search with companies that specialise in this type of furnishings. Consider purchasing Gardenfurniture-Online rattan furniture or products from a similar provider in your area. These will be comfortable as well as stylish, and they also allow you to make changes in the layout of patio with ease, since no single furnishing is going to be too heavy. 

Be mindful of your space.

Assuming your restaurant is going to be popular and sought-after, your floor space is going to translate directly into revenue. This leads some restaurant owners to squeeze as many tables in as possible. Of course, you also have to keep in mind that crowding in too many tables and chairs is going to compromise on guest comfort in a major way. The style of your tables and chairs needs to blend with the ambience of your restaurant. At the same time, this is not your end-all consideration. Bear in mind the amount of use that these furnishings are going to endure, with customers sitting down to eat at each table multiple times per day. 

Allow a little flourish in the waiting area.

Most people dread having to wait in the lobby for a table to become available. However, this is almost bound to be a reality if the restaurant is in the least bit popular. While it may not be practical for you to dramatically expand your building to allow for surges in customers, you can at least make the wait more pleasant by arranging some stylish and comfortable furnishings that guests wouldn’t mind waiting around on.

Garden Furniture Online is a UK business that offers a selection of outdoor furniture pieces. To view their product ranges, check gardenfurniture-online.co.uk.