For a restaurateur, buying or renting a building for your restaurant can be even more exciting than purchasing your first house. This is the physical manifestation of all your hopes and dreams, not to mention all your money and planning. Yet how do you know what the appropriate size of your restaurant should be?
To determine how big your restaurant should be, you first need a restaurant floor plan that lays out all the features of your building. About 60 percent of your floor space should go towards dining/seating and 40 percent for everything else, including the kitchen and any other food prep spaces and break areas.
Wait, what’s a restaurant floor plan? In this guide, we’ll explain restaurant floor plans in-depth as well as how to create your own. That will make calculating the ideal size of your restaurant a lot easier. Keep reading, as you won’t want to miss it!
How to Make Your Restaurant Floor Plan
If you’re an architect, you don’t hire a construction team to start building your creation without planning first, right? Of course! An architect will make sketches that turn into drawings as well as blueprints that tell the construction team exactly what goes where.
In the restaurant industry, you have a blueprint of sorts as well. It’s your restaurant floor plan.
Whether you’re getting a new building erected for your restaurant or moving into a preexisting space, you need a restaurant floor plan. The floor plan indicates where all the crucial features of your restaurant will go, including:
- Entry and exit doors
- Emergency exit doors
- Windows
- Payment and point-of-sale systems
- Indoor and outdoor seating
- Backroom or staff room
- Bathrooms
- Bar (as applicable)
- Waiting area
- Chairs and tables
- Kitchen appliances, including stoves and refrigerators
- The kitchen itself
Making a restaurant floor plan is sort of like playing a game of Tetris. All the pieces have to fit seamlessly. Unlike Tetris though, you can’t have everything on top of one another. That’s why the numbers we’ll talk about in the next section will be so crucial. You need to create distance, but the right amount of distance for the square footage you have.
How do you go about creating a restaurant floor plan for your establishment? Here are the steps.
Step 1: Hire the Appropriate Help
Some restaurateurs design their floor plans themselves while others will hire a third party so it’s done right. Working with an architect can ensure your restaurant meets regulations and is a safe, efficient space for diners to come and enjoy. If you have the budget, you might hire an interior designer as well to help create the sense of style you’ve always envisioned for your establishment.
For aspiring restaurateurs on a tight budget, you’re much better off spending your money on an architect than an interior designer.
Step 2: Measure Your Restaurant in Square Feet
It’s impossible to determine how many tables and chairs you can fit in your restaurant if you don’t even know how big it is. You’ll need to visit your commercial restaurant space with some measuring tape and take down the numbers.
Step 3: Use Restaurant Floor Plan Software
Now that you’ve seen the commercial space in person, you probably have dozens of ideas in your head for how you can make your restaurant fantastic. Drawing a floor plan on paper with a pencil or pen is not going to work here. You need real software so you can go back and make changes to your floor plan later because you definitely will make changes.
SmartDraw is one such restaurant floor plan software that’s highly regarded among restaurateurs. Two of the others are CAD Pro and ConceptDraw. None of these software options are free, by the way. Sure, you can use a free trial, but you’ll be expected to pay eventually.
For one user, SmartDraw costs $9.95 a month, so it’s not exactly breaking the bank. You can get a discount if you have more than five users, as then the software costs only $5.95 a month. You’re free to cancel your floor plan software when your floor plan is completely finished and you’re happy with it.
Step 4: Put Together Your Floor Plan
Here’s the hardest part by far, where you sit down and begin deciding where everything in your restaurant will go. Remember, you need a waiting area, a dining area, a kitchen, bathrooms, a rest area for staff, and possibly even a bar. Deciding how you’ll allocate that space could take a lot of trial and error.
As you design your restaurant’s interior, your budget must remain top of mind. It’s easy to get carried away when you’re playing around with drawings in SmartDraw or CAD Pro. These aren’t going to be just drawings, but the layout of your actual restaurant. Don’t waste your time putting together a floor plan that’s not financially feasible.
You also can’t forget about accessibility as you make your restaurant floor plan. Since 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act or ADA has protected those with disabilities from being discriminated against. If your restaurant doesn’t have wheelchair accessibility, then you could be sued by a disabled customer or employee.
Meeting ADA standards does not only apply to your restaurant’s entrances and exits, by the way, but everything in there. Can your disabled patrons get to the bar? Where would they sit if they can’t reach the tall barstools? How will they get into the seats in your dining area? How do they get into the bathroom? Is there a handicap-accessible bathroom stall that’s large enough to accommodate wheelchairs?
You also have to meet your city or town’s building code. These regulations vary from city to city and state to state, so please read up on yours. Sometimes the rules are a little strange. For example, if you’re opening a restaurant in San Francisco, California, you can’t add an icemaker without a floor drain adjacent to it.
Failing to meet your building code regulations can lead to fines or worse, your restaurant getting shut down, possibly for good. Fortunately, the architect you hired should know your local ordinances inside and out. They’ll guide you through this part of the restaurant design process.
You can see how planning your restaurant’s layout can be grueling. You’ll have what you thought were great ideas, then you’ll have to start all over again because you didn’t plan for how big the kitchen would be or how many seats you needed in the dining area.
Your restaurant’s floor plan doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel. You can always use preexisting layouts. TouchBistro, a restaurant management POS solution, has 15 such plans you can review, borrow, or straight-up copy. Whether your building is regularly sized or a little tight in some corners, there should be a floor plan that works for you.
Calculating How Big Your Restaurant Should Be
Before you can say that your restaurant floor plan is 100 percent complete, you need to do some math. The dining room will comprise 60 percent of the available interior space of your restaurant and the preparation, storage, cooking, and kitchen spaces 40 percent.
You have to create distance between the seats in your building, but only in that 60 percent of your restaurant. The average height of a barstool is 29 to 30 inches while the bar itself can be between 30 and 42 inches tall. Non-bar seating is 17 to 18 inches tall and tables are 29 to 30 inches.
How many square feet should you dedicate to dining? That depends on what kind of restaurant you are. If you’re a banquet hall, then customers will expect 10 to 11 square feet of dining space at the minimum. For table service at a club or hotel, you need to allocate 15 to 18 square feet.
Fast food restaurants are usually smaller than other restaurants, so you should set aside 11 to 14 square feet of dining space when making your restaurant floor plan. If you have more room, that’s great, but it’s not necessary.
For a counter service restaurant, you’ll need 18 to 20 square feet. Full-service restaurants must have dining space between 12 and 15 square feet. For a fine dining restaurant, you need the same amount of room as a counter service establishment, which is 18 to 20 square feet.
If your entire building measured 5,000 square feet, then that would mean 2,000 square feet would go towards the kitchen and 3,000 square feet would be for the dining area. You should be able to fit 200 seats comfortably.
Do you need 200 seats in your restaurant? More so, do you have the budget for 200 seats? If you answered no to both those questions, then you should look for a smaller building. However, if you said yes, then it could just be that you found the building that will become your restaurant!
The Importance of Having the Right Amount of Space for Your Restaurant
Sizing your restaurant to your needs is like the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Your restaurant can’t be too big or too small. It has to be just right. Here’s why.
Keep Your Rent/Mortgage Controllable
It’s so tempting to supersize your restaurant building because hey, who doesn’t love having more space? Your bank account won’t love it. The larger your building, the more money you’ll spend on your rent or mortgage every month.
Restaurants already have such a high rate of failure, especially startups in their first year. Draining yourself financially trying to afford a building that’s too big for your restaurant’s needs is a great way to become another restaurant failure statistic.
If your rent or mortgage is low right now, then please appreciate that, because it won’t be low for long. Your payments will likely increase as the years go by, making you long for those early affordable days.
Staff and Diners Aren’t on Top of Each Other
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way that people think about personal space, possibly forever. If there’s ever a time then that the average consumer won’t want to be two feet away from other diners, it would be now. Your staff also will want the breathing room, mostly for their health and safety, but for their sanity as well.
After all, the whole point of taking a break is getting away from work for a few minutes. If they’re side by side with their fellow cook in the break room/area, that doesn’t really constitute a break, does it?
Create a Relaxing Ambiance
When diners walk into your restaurant, how do you want them to feel? Maybe happy or exhilarated or entertained. Above all, you’d prefer for them to be comfortable. Someone who’s comfortable will have a big empty stomach they’ll wish to fill at your restaurant.
The ambiance of your restaurant starts from the moment someone walks up to the building. What kind of message and mood do you convey with the atmosphere of the building, such as the building materials or the signage? When a customer opens the door, what greets them first?
As you walk through your finished restaurant before opening day, think like a first-time visitor. How do you feel going through the waiting room, the bar, and into the dining room? What is it like to be in the bathroom or to walk through any of the doors?
When your restaurant is roomy and your floor plan is open and easy, your restaurant will have a relaxing vibe that your customers won’t be able to get enough of.
Conclusion
Determining the size of your restaurant requires a restaurant floor plan. When making your floor plan, you need 60 percent of the available space to go towards dining. You also must follow your local building regulations and ensure that your entire establishment is handicap-accessible.
Although it’s not easy, your floor plan can be the blueprint to your restaurant’s success, so take the time to make it an awesome design. Good luck!
