Dining & Designing I: Decoding the Drama

Restaurants and cafes are about the food and beverages, period. 

We have enough examples around us to prove that the product at an eatery being sublime allows for other factors to be rather inconsequential. One would naively assume that to be the case if we just glanced at the anecdotal evidence around us. Yet, the restaurant industry sees as many heartbreaks as the last semester of college.

When we believe that food or product is the only defining factor at our favourite eatery, we miss the details that go into making our evenings memorable. Think of iconic restaurants, ones that have remained unchanged for decades, serving the same dishes in the same setting with the same staff - the inertia is almost palatable. Yet, the queues just don’t get shorter with time.

You could say “it’s just the food”, and that would be a rather myopic analysis. An iconic place, whilst being anachronistic, allows us to experience nostalgia, something that a modern restaurant may never offer. We must realise that the great customer experience lies beyond food, in the neural connection with this place and its feeling of timelessness, the comfort that some good things never change.

It is challenging to rival that legacy and history by trying to apply a formula without its context. Hence, restaurants today have to do a bit more to compete than just put good food on the table - they too have to create lasting neural connections with their customers.

Great design allows you to do just that. We orchestrate the environment to allow the guest to emote, maybe even elicit a visible reaction every time they come to dine with you. This production quality dining experience isn’t a matter of chance - it’s the result of carefully curating all "moments that matter" your guests could have while dining with you.

When you wander (based on the anecdotes I hear) into the business of gastronomy, you seldom realise the entirety of this orb about to engulf you. You find yourself surviving (and thriving) if you have the right set of tools to deal with the facile judgments that guests throw your way. This toolbox includes partners and experts working in tandem to create a splendid tapestry of your visions. An able architect/interior designer, a creative agency, and fearless professionals in gastronomy are just the prerequisites to stitch your vision together.

Now you may feel you’ve got a plan of what you need to do to create value. Well, do we know what value is really?

I’d anoint it as creating a connection worthy of Nostalgia.

To remain a viable business in the era of sky-high rentals and rapidly changing trends, we must connect with our users on a singular, very important issue - one that allows them to evangelise our brand. We have to back up our brand’s spokespeople by constantly delivering and innovating on that one promise that we make.

Let’s take the example of Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters, which has persistently been unequivocal on its promise to offer Single Estate Arabica from Indian farms. They engage you while serving as well as teaching you how to brew these coffees. They send out regular emails when they launch new blends or introduce new farms. Their social media, among other things, constantly creates a product aspiration and addresses various brewing methods, allowing those who care to form their base of loyal followers. These followers, in turn, become their purveyors of the one strong issue to connect on. Today, as they grow to multiple cities, they don’t waver when it comes to delivering on their one brand promise - freshly roasted single estate Arabica beans, which make for excellent coffee.

When you know what you sell, customers also know what they buy. We must develop such a relationship with our audiences to build truly valuable businesses, regardless of whether it’s a coffee shop, ramen bar, or nightclub. While maintaining a consistent offering, we realise that our customers start noticing the smallest changes in our efforts - menu, ambience, or staff. This is a sign that you are recognized for what matters. They are connected with us, they care if we shut shop. Ask anybody who’s shut down their food business if they could pinpoint why their customers cared for them, or rather, even if they did at all - their answer will not surprise you.

We all have a few bucks to offer as guests at a restaurant or coffee shop, but it’s our care that is the reward. If customers share their already fought for two-fucks, then they’d truly be disappointed if they're unable to visit our loved places. We’d be amiss to not reiterate that no one would truly care if they could not develop a strong connection with your brand - and the only way to develop that is to have an offering that is deserving of care, an experience that allows your customers to feel grateful that you took the effort to open this “much-needed” space. If you’re not hearing that enough, then maybe you’re doing nothing worthy of their care, or you’re unable to make it matter enough. 

Restaurants and cafes are about food when you’ve subtly designed and deliberated every experience your guest may have, period.