When you renovate a restaurant, it’s a big undertaking, but it can be extremely profitable. As a restaurant owner, renovating is one way to improve your business's ambiance, functionality, and bottom line.
However, before you start to renovate your restaurant, it’s important to do your due diligence first. The restaurant business is competitive, and a poorly planned revamp could leave you worse off than before.
Use our handy guide to find out everything you need to know about the renovation process.
Before getting your restaurant remodel off the ground, you should assess your goals by asking yourself these questions:
Do you want to improve your dining room’s ambiance?
Does your restaurant need more square feet?
Would your restaurant benefit from an interior design revamp?
Understanding your end game will help you renovate your restaurant without breaking the bank. Doing so is useful for benchmarking renovations against industry average costs. It should also get you thinking about whether an entire or partial renovation is necessary.
While a restaurant renovation can make your business more profitable, not all revamps are worthwhile. Seriously consider if you can hold off on renovating for another year or two without negative consequences. If the answer is yes, don’t be afraid to put your restaurant renovation on the back burner. You can always come back to it in the future.
But if your plan shows that your restaurant business will benefit from the renovation process, you shouldn’t be afraid to pay for an upgrade to your restaurant design as you may make that money back in extra revenue later on.
Now that you’ve identified your restaurant renovation goals and you’ve done your cash flow research, it’s time to create your renovation plan. Identify the biggest areas of concern that you have with your restaurant’s look and functionality and work backward from there.
In an ideal world, you would hit all of your must-haves when you renovate your restaurant. However, it’s all too common for restaurateurs to run out of funds before hitting the end of their checklist. Creating an ordered list will keep you on track and lessen the risk of overspending.
Also, consider the following tips when making your renovation plan.
As a restaurateur, one of your primary concerns when you renovate your restaurant should be balancing back-of-house and front-of-house concerns. While we normally associate renovations with interior design, ambiance, and other front-of-house problems, back-of-house concerns like ensuring your cooks have the right equipment and enough restaurant space to work are equally important.
Talk to the kitchen and wait staff to find out what your restaurant’s pain points are. Once you have a good idea of your restaurant’s major problems, you can more easily decide where to put your money.
When planning out how to renovate your restaurant, it’s important to take wheelchair accessibility into consideration with a new floor plan. Not only will this keep you on the compliant side of the Americans with Disabilities Act, but it will help you more accurately budget for proper regulations, from entrance width to signage height. Plus, you don’t want to inadvertently prevent any potential new customers from dining in your restaurant.
Ambiance is another important general consideration. Ask yourself how this new renovation fits in with your restaurant’s theme. If you’re going for a casual dining experience, you may want to decorate your walls with eye-catching photos, posters, and other decor.
Regardless of your interior design, it’s important that the exterior of your restaurant makes a good impression. Don’t forget to hire a general contractor to landscape the outside of your restaurant space.
Many restaurant owners undergo a slow season because of factors outside of their control. For example, if you’re a restaurateur in a beach town, you probably don’t get a lot of traffic during the winter. On the flip side, if you run a restaurant in a Colorado ski town, your slow season is probably during the summer when the ski slopes are bare.
You can take advantage of this lull in business to renovate your restaurant. Renovating during the slow season is a great way to take your restaurant to the next level without impacting your business too much.
Your restaurant renovation should do more than make your social media photos pop. It’s also a good chance to switch up your restaurant’s equipment. From your light fixtures to your stoves, check to make sure that the items your staff uses on a day-to-day basis are working as intended.
Even if nothing is broken, you can still attract new customers by upgrading your equipment. For example, swapping out inefficient incandescent light bulbs with more efficient LED light bulbs can slash your monthly electric bill.
You should also consider installing new restaurant self-serve kiosks when you renovate your restaurant. Traditional self-serve kiosks are bulky, expensive, and difficult to use. However, you can take advantage of a new wave of sleek, affordable, and intuitive self-service kiosks.
You can effortlessly download an app like KioskBuddy onto a tablet and connect it to a credit card machine, like the Square Kiosk. The public usually already knows how to operate these devices, making it the perfect way to add ease into both customers’ and employees’ lives.
These labor-saving devices let your front-of-house staff deal with more important matters like ensuring a positive customer experience. You’ll save money, and your wait staff will save time. Talk about a win-win situation!
Now that your restaurant renovation is finally finished, it’s time to hop on social media so you can let the whole world know about your revamp. Using your company’s official Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter page can help you save money while getting the word out to your most loyal customers.
Using social media also leaves the potential that your post could reach new customers through the platform’s search algorithm. Plus, you may be able to reach even more potential customers if you run a paid ad.
Most major social media platforms will let you create a paid digital advertising campaign that can cost as little as $5 per day. You don’t need to pay an outside consultant or have any fancy design skills — just a basic knowledge of your target audience.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t engage in traditional marketing methods. Consider putting up posters around your community, and if the budget allows for it, rent a billboard.
Think back to your restaurant’s grand opening. Many of the same promotional methods will be equally effective after you renovate your restaurant.
Renovating your restaurant doesn’t have to be hard. The key is to make a game plan. Consult with your front-of-house and back-of-house staff and decide beforehand what your priorities are. Also, renovate during the slow season for minimal service and financial disruption. Finally, use your renovation as an opportunity to update your restaurant equipment and maybe even the customer experience with a self-serve kiosk system.
KioskBuddy is a self-service kiosk app that lets your customers order directly from their table, the service counter, or a wall mount. You can download this low-cost ordering solution directly onto your tablet. It’s integrated with the Square POS, making for a seamless customer experience.
Get started today with your 30-day free trial of KioskBuddy!