Fast food retail interior design

There was a time when fast food was about being fast and cheap. It was a fairly new and very convenient concept. So convenient in fact that fast food retailers built their entire store, shopping experience, service levels, and food standards to meet customers’ ‘quick’ and ‘cheap’ needs. And it worked! Fast forward a few years and better nutrition education, the need to eat healthy meals and also the sheer amount of competition in the market has meant that fast food chains have to completely change their approach to adapt to the new consumer needs of the market. XXI century. .

The focus is now on offering a stronger brand to reach a broader base of customers who want to stay with and make the outlet part of their daily or weekly routine. So what does the new branding approach require? Well, it should demonstrate freshness, good quality ingredients, an improved shopping experience, a more pleasant seating environment, greater comfort, more visibility into food preparation areas, and improved amenities.

While ingredients and food quality are obviously a key and vital component of the brand, this article focuses on the architectural and interior design of the establishment and how the various elements of the interior design impact the brand and therefore Therefore, they elevate the customer experience for modern fast food chains.

Before considering the design of fast food chains, it is worth looking at how luxury goods retailers and vehicle showrooms have approached store or point of sale design to deliver their brand. Luxury brands, for example, have always designed stores to captivate different market segments, yet maintain a self-delivered sense of individuality. Luxury stores almost clearly seem to lack the amount of merchandise on display and, in some cases, keep plain colors and simple, soft furnishings to make customers feel comfortable. Vehicle showrooms are an established example for retail as they have mastered the continuous purchasing and service needs of customers at a single point of sale. The way showrooms are designed enables vehicle manufacturers to provide an environment that enables them to manage the flow or ‘journey’ from buying a new car, arranging financing, service and delivery. purchasing parts, while having pleasant and well-stocked waiting areas. Both are examples of point-of-sale creation that manage different needs, build loyalty, and provide a seamless journey from initial purchase desire to closing the deal.

For retail interior designers and architects, fast food retail design poses a number of challenges that need to be addressed to reinforce the new branding challenges that retailers are facing.

Here is a summary of some of those challenges:

Food preparation – Provide more visibility of food preparation areas, including open-plan kitchen areas. This requires a practical, but also visibly more pleasant, well-lit, well-organized and efficient food area. A specialized kitchen design is required that takes into account the cooking and food preparation process, requiring designers and architects to work closely with a retailer to create kitchen design plans that allow for the food preparation process. Food remains efficient while remaining visibly pleasing and customer-friendly. watch.

The experience of eating – The need to provide an efficient seating arrangement, with comfortable seating, while paying close attention to lighting plans and store floor plans is so important as it allows customers to feel that they can sticking around for a while, this is in stark contrast to early fast food restaurants where seating was designed to become uncomfortable after fifteen minutes, encouraging people to leave the establishment.

Selection of accessories and accessories – Retail interior designers should also focus on other consumer needs, such as electrical outlets, interactive devices for children, and adding artwork that reinforces the message about the ‘fresh food element’, all important elements that the brand is trying to offer.

Interactive ordering solutions – Retailers are also incorporating electronic ordering stations into their designs to allow customers to select and pay for their order without speaking to a staff member. This requires fewer staff, of course, but it also requires the need to design a retail layout that allows interactive kiosks to be strategically located within the point-of-sale layout.

Improved bathroom facilities – Retail designers and architects must design bathroom fixtures that meet brand expectations. The facilities they specify have to reinforce the brand by maintaining a high degree of cleanliness or even ‘self-cleaning’ facilities. Tea retail design drawings They create for plumbing and waste must take into account today’s environment.

Back of house and debris – Customers are not happy enough with the experience they can see and feel, they also want to know how fast food chains are managing their staff facilities, their food storage and their waste, including the customer’s own packaging waste . The design of a store is not complete without paying attention to how these aspects add to the design of the point of sale and how they are managed efficiently and fairly and therefore are also an important part of the responsibilities of the design team. .

The challenge for designers is therefore vast and instead of allowing production of the design using traditional 2D plans and elevations. The only way to manage and communicate the design process, as well as manage changes requested by stakeholders throughout the process, is to use modern design tools such as Revit Architecture to create retail BIM models so that they can create a design that is easily modifiable and manageable. . Retail BIM modeling it also enables the use and reuse of Revit families and models that can be used for downstream stores, thereby ensuring some brand consistency and design efficiency. Once created, these retail BIM models will also enable the creation of retail 3D images and a 3D rendered perspective for retail interiors and exteriors. It is an important and effective way of communicating the design of the store or point of sale during the various design stages for which a designer is responsible.

While the challenge for fast food retailing is to provide food faster and cheaper than other options, there are good reasons to raise the importance of store design and how that will affect and ultimately promote the overall shopping experience. the brand for fast food retail now and in the future. the future. Managing that design process and the multitude of design inputs is a collaborative and involved process and is one that is attended by a designer who is prepared to use CAD and BIM technology as the backbone to deliver a design solution that is easy. to create, manage, share and communicate.

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