Unless your restaurant is a 50’s themed diner, you shouldn’t be okay with having a dated interior design. The atmosphere of your pizzeria can make or break the dining experience for your customers, with 15% of customers being significantly impacted by the atmosphere at even the most casual restaurants. So if your interior hasn’t seen any updates in quite some time, here are some quick fixes that you can implement to modernize the look and feel of your restaurant.
1. Install New Lighting Fixtures
The “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach won’t work for restaurant lighting. Those 15-year-old track lights might work just fine but they’re not doing you any favors in terms of the dining experience. If your lighting fixtures are overdue for a makeover, then this is your chance to install some more modern options that will make your interior more flattering.
The first thing you’ll want to look for is adjustable light fixtures. Instead of just being turned on or off, they should have dimmer settings that adjust the amount of light to reflect that time of day.
More light is needed earlier in the day, and it should gradually get dimmer in your restaurant as you get closer to dinner time.
At the very least, you should consider replacing the lighting directly above your customer seating areas. A new set of neutral-colored pendant lighting fixtures can make a world of difference and make it much easier for customers to read menus and interact with your serving staff.
2. Introduce New Paint Colors to Dining Areas
It’s amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do to modernize your restaurant. But if you’re already going to be repainting anyways, this is the perfect opportunity to introduce a new color or two inside of your pizzeria.
The color scheme within your restaurant should match the colors used on your website, menus, and all other marketing materials.
Your ideal colors for any fast-casual eating establishment are warm tones, including shades of yellow, red, orange, and gold. These colors will help stimulate your customers with feelings of excitement, creating a high turnover rate, which is especially great when you’re serving comfort foods like pizza.
3. Clean Your Carpets and Replace the Rim
Whenever you deep clean your home, it always looks like a completely different space. Well, the same applies to your restaurant. Sometimes all you need to modernize your flooring is a good cleaning, especially when it comes to carpet, which is notorious for holding a surprising amount of dirt and grime even after a quick vacuum.
If you want to take it even further, you can replace sections with some tile or wood. Rather than replacing the entire carpet, which can be quite a costly and lengthy process, you can take the outer 1-foot rim of carpet and swap it out for a more modern material. The rim is likely going to be the most worn portion of the carpet, so replacing it in addition to the deep cleaning, should extend the life of your existing carpet by years.
4. Choose Timeless Elements
The best way to modernize your restaurant is to pick elements that look good in any decade. This also minimizes the updates you’ll have to do further down the road, which makes it the gift that keeps on giving. Try rearranging your tables and other decor in the restaurant to create a symmetrical seating area. There’s a timeless beauty to symmetry that will appease your customers for years to come.
Changing the seating arrangement within the restaurant can throw off your entire process if you don’t have a POS with an automated seating-management system that can easily adjust the customized table layout.
But you should apply this strategy to more than just your decor. By using timeless technology within the restaurant as well, you can modernize the customer journey and prevent the ordering process from feeling outdated. That’s why it’s so important that you have a point-of-sale system that is future-proofed and won’t need to be replaced in another couple of years. You can easily find out just how future-proof any POS is by using our handy online calculator.
Once you’ve updated the lighting fixtures, used a fresh coat of paint, cleaned and modified the flooring, and upgraded to timeless elements, your restaurant will actually look like something that belongs in this decade. If you’re interested in other ways to modernize your restaurant, check out these 6 biggest technology trends changing food delivery.
