What a Designer Will Ask You to Prepare Before You Open a Restaurant
Before you brief a designer, brief yourself.
Before you hire a designer for a restaurant, arrive with a few things in hand. The first meeting can then go straight to whether the site can work and where it will get stuck, instead of an hour on which style you like.
Our contact page asks anyone writing in for the type of business, location and floor area, budget, target opening date and lease status. For food and beverage, we also ask for average spend per guest and seat count. This is not form-filling. Each item changes how we design, and here is why.
1. The opening date
Start with the opening date, then talk design. A restaurant schedule runs backwards from opening day, not forwards from signing. Design, drawing approval, tendering, site entry and handover all have to fit, and only the total tells you whether there is still time.
If the date is set by a rent-start date, a mall's calendar or a season, tell us. It is the one end of the schedule that cannot move.
2. The lease and the condition of the site
How far the lease has got decides whether we can survey the site, whether we can touch the services, and how far we can go. Existing drawings matter in the same way: at the start of a project we ask first for the occupancy permit drawings.
Old buildings do not match their drawings. Services and structure have to be resolved first, so the design has somewhere to land. Malls and office towers also have works rules of their own, such as no work at weekends. Please give us those before you sign, because they change how the works are sequenced.
3. The menu and how it is served
The menu decides the kitchen. Cooked to order, part-prepared, or prepared elsewhere and delivered: each needs different equipment, extraction, water and drainage, gas and power. These have to be fixed early. Decide a week later and the works start a week later.
The best starting point is a kitchen equipment list with dimensions: range, undercounter fridges, combi oven, dishwasher, glasswasher, ice machine and sinks, each with quantity and size. From that list we can start drawing how large the kitchen needs to be and how the flow runs.
If the menu is not final, that is fine. Tell us which dishes are certain and which equipment is essential, and we can mark out the kitchen first.
4. Seat count and average spend
We always ask for these two numbers. More seats is not better. We work backwards from staffing: how many tables can this team serve well at peak, and only then how many seats to place.
How seats and circulation are worked out together is covered in restaurant circulation and yield per ping.
5. The budget, and what it covers
One number is not enough. You also need to say what it covers. Fit-out only, or equipment such as kitchen, air-conditioning and refrigeration too? Furniture and lighting? Are design fees, supervision fees and tax inside or outside? What about the architect's sign-off for fire safety and interior renovation permits?
Our estimates group cost into base works, fit-out works and equipment works, with design fees, supervision fees and tax listed separately. If the scope is not stated, the first meeting becomes two people discussing different numbers. What tends to eat a budget is covered in how to set a restaurant fit-out budget.
6. First venue or repeat
A first venue and a repeat venue are two different jobs. A first venue is derived from the brand's position. A repeat venue adapts an established concept to a new site. Please say which at the first meeting, because it changes how the fee is calculated: for repeat venues we charge only a drawing-adaptation fee. Details are in what design costs per ping.
7. What you already like, and refuse
Places you love, places you do not, materials or methods you will never accept: bring whatever you have, ideally as a short brief for designers and a set of reference images. The more specific the material, the fewer detours the first round takes.
“What you can state clearly, the designer can draw. What you cannot shows up on site as extras.”
You do not need all seven at once. Our contact page says it plainly: bring your floor plan and your ideas, nothing needs to be decided yet, and we will tell you first whether it can be done and roughly where it will get stuck.
準備開餐廳、找設計師之前，先備好七件事：預計開幕時間、租約與場地現況、菜單與出餐方式、座位數與客單價、預算範圍、第幾家店、參考與不要。每一項都會改變設計的做法。你說得清楚的部分，設計師畫得出來；說不清楚的部分，會在工程裡變成追加。
Bring the idea for your shop and the site, and we will run the numbers together first.