Restaurant Circulation and Yield per Ping: Work It Out at the Design Stage
A floor plan is a schedule of footsteps.
Restaurant circulation and yield per ping have to be worked out on the floor plan, because once the walls are up, every footstep has been decided. Yield is revenue divided by floor area, and that is a result. What design can move are the causes behind it: the number of seats, the route a dish travels, and how many people are needed at peak.
One of the two words in our name is Operation, and this is what it means. This piece is not about philosophy. It is about how to check a plan.
1. Draw three routes before you place seats
A restaurant floor plan carries three routes at once. The guest's route: entrance, waiting, seat, toilet, payment. The food's route: kitchen, pass, table. The dishes' route: table, clearing, dishwash. Wherever the three cross is where peak service will jam.
Draw the three first. See whether the crossings can be reduced or staggered, and only then place the bar and tables. Reverse the order and you get a beautiful room in which front of house has to walk the long way round. We wrote about paying that tuition in ON Stands for Two Words.
2. Derive seat count backwards from staffing
Seat count is not how many chairs fit. It is how many seats this team can serve well at peak. Ask how many people will be in front of house and in the kitchen at peak, and how many tables one person in front of house can look after. Then decide how many seats.
The number also has to be read together with average spend. In the same room, few seats, high spend and long stays make a different restaurant from many seats, low spend and fast turnover, and the floor plan changes with it.
3. The three variables behind yield
Revenue breaks down into three things: seats, turnover (how long a guest stays) and average spend. Design does not set average spend directly, but it can move the first two: seats through the floor plan, and stay time through comfort, speed of service and the experience of waiting.
A seat that is too comfortable keeps guests from leaving. One that is too hard keeps spend from rising. The balance depends on the kind of business, which is why at a first meeting we ask what kind of restaurant yours is.
4. Counter seating: guests and kitchen share one edge
The bar and counter seating change routes more than any other element on a floor plan. When we plan counter seating, one counter is shared by cook, sommelier and guest. The open kitchen is not for display. It lets people at the counter feel the rhythm of the kitchen. The bar often becomes the core of the whole place, with guests sitting where they can best watch the chef.
The benefit of counter seating is a short service route. The cost is that the kitchen has to withstand being watched. The smaller the space, the earlier this trade-off arrives: the first decision is often where the kitchen goes. Once that is fixed, the bar can consider how to receive the people sitting down, and extraction, ventilation, air-conditioning and lighting have to be arranged together at the same scale.
5. Checking a floor plan
One. Walk from the seat furthest from the pass to the pass and count the steps. Then imagine it with a tray in your hands and people in the aisle at peak.
Two. Where two routes cross, is there a width at which one person stopping blocks another?
Three. How far is the dishwash from the point where dishes are cleared, and do dishes cross the guests' seating area on the way back?
Four. At peak, where does front of house stand to see every table, and is there a service station there?
Five. Multiply seats by your expected turnover and average spend, and see whether revenue can carry the cost of the space. The sum will not be precise, but it shows obvious mismatches before work starts.
“Seats are what you sell. Circulation is the cost you pay every day.”
Found at the floor-plan stage, these cost an eraser. Found after the walls are up, they cost demolition. How to set the budget is covered in how to set a restaurant fit-out budget. What else to prepare before work starts is in what a designer will ask you to prepare before you open a restaurant.
餐廳的動線和坪效，要在平面圖階段算好，因為牆砌起來之後，每一步路都已經決定了。先畫客人、菜、碗盤三條路，座位數從人力反推，坪效拆成席數、翻桌與客單價。檯前座位縮短出餐路線，也要求廚房經得起被看。最後是檢查平面圖的五個步驟。
Bring the idea for your shop and the site, and we will run the numbers together first.