Design Your Restaurant for Hygiene and Comfort

Design for Hygiene

On 24^th February, 2009 one of the leading restaurants in the world – The Fat Duck, located in a county near London, shut down operations for more than a fortnight because of a health scare. Forty of its customers had complained of getting ill after a meal. The management could not find the cause. They closed down operations and called for a health inspection. No reason was discovered. The Fat Duck is reputed to have self-imposed the most rigorous process of health monitoring. The cause was never found out and the restaurant was re-opened in mid-March, after incurring a loss of 100,000 pounds in lost revenues.

Hygiene and health issues can never be taken for granted, and hence a deep concern about it from the design stage will pay rewards later.

In India, water-based pollutants and vectors are a big cause of spreading disease and sickness. You should consider installing a reverse osmosis (RO) plant to ensure that food items and crockery are washed and prepared in treated water.

Ensure that the flows of food under preparation and clean plates do not overlap in anyway with the removal of dirty plates and leftover food and disposal of waste. Ensure that stations where raw meat and fish are prepared do not overlap with vegetables and fruit, to prevent cross-contamination. Set up separate sinks for kitchen staff to wash hands in the back of the house area. Institute surprise checks to ensure that processes set up for hygiene are strictly followed. In matters of hygiene, prevention is the only solution. The example of the Fat Duck tells us that finding a cure is too expensive.

Design for Comfort

As with most production spaces, special attention should be paid to design proper ventilation. The intense operations of a restaurant kitchen will call for chimney hoods, exhaust blowers and ducting to ensure that all smoke and cooking odours are directed outside. Good ventilation will enable that conditions do not get too intense and impact the preparation and cooking processes.

It would be useful to designate areas for staff where they could keep their belongings and, if possible, change and wash up. In full-service restaurants, staff would need a separate restroom. This will clear other areas for smooth operations.

Launching Your Restaurant.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle in his classic book Politics quoted a proverb – “Well begun is half done.” The launch of operations in the restaurant business epitomises this saying. Reputation matters more than anything else in the restaurant business. Reputation is built on how past performance is perceived by people. The success of your restaurant greatly depends on how the experience of your early customers makes them into your strong supporters and advocates. Today, the power of word of mouth has been multiplied many times through social media networks – be it restaurant review sites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter.

A useful analogy is to look at your restaurant launch as the staging of a theatre performance that is scheduled to run for years. Staging a theatrical performance calls for intensive preparation so that the opening day performance is perfect. Think of the Republic Day Parade held every year since 1950 on 26^th January. Has there ever been a less-than-perfect performance? Your launch has to be well planned and well prepared.

In terms of a broad checklist your launch plans should not be finalised until you have the big three elements of your restaurant in place – great concept, great location and great food. To this add sufficient financial resources to run operations till break-even point is met. Finally, it is recommended that the main team should be in place at least 4 to 6 weeks before the launch date so that the team can be trained in all operations. All menu items should be tested out. Systems and processes for all customer-dealing situations need to be worked out and drilled. Think of this in terms of conducting rehearsals before the opening day.

It would be useful to think of launching your restaurant operations as a project. The final objective of the project is to create stable operations generating enough revenues, which will help you meet the break-even point on schedule.

The first project task would be to start promotions as soon as you can lock onto a final launch date. Training schedules need to culminate into a soft launch that can be viewed like a final dress rehearsal. Invited non-paying guests should be welcomed to your restaurant for a full service meal.

The launch project should look beyond the launch date and design a process of getting the house in order by ironing out the minor issues that will emerge in the early days of operations. Finally, you should target on ways to increase revenues to ensure you meet your financial targets.

After operations and revenue flows stabilise at acceptable levels, you can explore how to maintain the excitement in your restaurant by building novelty, innovation and improvement.

What do you think about the launch of the restaurants? Write in to Quitters and share your views.