In my year as a restaurant architect I have discovered that you can’t see a successful restaurant without noticing how much abuse the customer puts on the restaurant walls. This abuse will take several forms. Some wall will get scuffed and dirty from patrons touching the walls. Walls will get dented from chairs and tables bumping into them. Walls will get worn down by cleaning them. On of the most important restaurant ideas is to harden these walls and still make it look good. Waiting area walls get dirty, dinge room wall get dented form table and chair impacts, hallways get gouged from service equipment and mop buckets. If a wall is exposed to any kind of traffic it will be abused, therefore the walls must be hardened. If a restaurants wall is just painted it will get scratched and dented.

You are only limited by your creativity and the budget in the various ways to harden walls. The design challenge is to make these techniques look natural and part of the over all design and not just an after thought. Some ideas that have been used with success are; traffic coatings which are just heavy duty paints pricey but they leave a clean look, wainscoting a very traditional solution and alternate wall material like wood paneling or tile. Cleaning is a different sort of abuse a wall can take so remember the restaurant staff who has to clean the wall and don’t just worry about the dents and dirt caused by the customer.  Read more...

As dieting and special eating plans become more popular, people are becoming even more interested in making healthy restaurant choices to make sure they stick to their diets. It’s taken consumers exerting a lot of pressure on their favorite eateries to start offering healthy restaurant choices, but they’re finally doing it.

Are you a vegetarian? Many restaurants have vegan options for their customers. Do you have celiac disease, where you can’t eat wheat, barley, or other long grains? Many restaurants are offering their gluten-intolerant customers their own healthy choices by serving gluten-free foods. No-Carb diet? No problem? Low fat? You can’t swing a carrot stick without hitting entire plates of healthy restaurant choices in the form of low-fat versions of a restaurant’s popular items.

You can even get healthy takeout from a lot of restaurants.

Not only do most healthy restaurants offer take out versions of their regular menu items, but there are even restaurants that specialize in filling healthy restaurant choices for their customers. Think vegetarian restaurants, Mediterranean restaurants, and organic, locally-grown restaurants.

You can make your healthy choices first by recognizing that it’s better to adopt healthy eating as a lifestyle, not as a diet to be started and stopped whenever you hit your target weight. By having permanent healthy eating habits, making healthy restaurant choices is much easier. And if you want to be naughty once in a while, and have something that’s not typically healthy, you won’t feel like you’ve failed in your diet.  Read more...