The "invisible" shop planning - the power of the hidden

Today, in our current Krämagazin article, we would like to devote ourselves to the topic of shopfitting - specifically, the "invisible" part of shopfitting planning. What do we mean by that? There is a "visible" part of planning: A facility must of course be visually appealing to the guest and the operator - colors, materials and decorative elements must create a coherent picture and invite the customer to linger. And of course, all the important and necessary equipment and elements must be present and easily accessible - a nice ice cream display case in a suitable size, the espresso machine, the cream dispenser. But good shopfitting and its planning is not only concerned with the technology used or limited to the design.

Because there is also the "invisible" part of store planning - and this has a great influence on the profitability of a pub: For example, workstations and walkways must be properly structured to enable a smooth and efficient workflow at different workloads. On the other hand, the right sight lines in the pub are important both for you as the operator for perfect work organization, and on the other hand they also influence - at least subconsciously - the overall experience of your guests. Why this is so and how to do it right - that's what we'll explain to you today.

Workplaces and walkways - save personnel and optimize turnover

Let's start with the most important thing: Optimized workplace planning saves personnel costs and enables higher turnover at the same time. Sounds paradoxical? Not necessarily - you just have to be smart about it.  

Ideally, your pub will be planned so that it can be comfortably run by a single person at quieter times (rainy days, early or late season, etc.) - through short work paths, sensible procedures, and smart sight lines (we'll go into more detail on this below!).

At the same time, however, on days with a high customer frequency, you need the possibility to have as many employees as possible work in a sensibly structured way and without conflicts. For example, one person can take care of the street sales, a second person can assemble the ice cream cups, a third person can take care of cakes and coffee, a fourth person can take care of the drinks, and a fifth employee can take care of snacks. A sixth employee takes care of the washing up. It is important that several employees do not cross each other and thus hinder each other - because surely you do not want to wipe the floor several times on a sunny summer day because one employee has knocked the freshly foamed cappuccino out of the other's hand while turning around...

At Krä, we place a lot of emphasis on the clean planning of walkways and workstations, because a disruption of only 5 seconds that happens 50 times a day results in 26 hours at the end of the year. So you see: Good planning can make or break the profitability of your café.

Customer walking lines - "guiding" the customer through the store

Just as important as the walking routes for employees are the walking lines for customers. Here too, customers want to get to where they want to go as undisturbed as possible and without "bottlenecks". But of course you can't put up "street signs" or "one-way streets" for customers - that's why it's important to guide customers unconsciously through sensible design. For example, in the case of a sidewalk sale, it makes sense to create a sufficiently large area in front of the sidewalk sale where the to-go customers can "circulate" as orderly as possible (i.e. line up -> order -> pay -> pick up) and then leave the establishment again without disturbing or obstructing the other guests. It should be possible to pass through to the various seating areas without having to squeeze through the other customers. And in the ideal case, everything is also designed in such a way that the waiters can also move effectively and quickly without colliding with the customers. Once again, it's clear that you can't plan the routes of customers and employees in isolation - it's all about the sensible overall concept.

The lines of sight - the eye works with

The second important but often neglected point is the sight lines. If a person is working alone on a quiet day (see above), then he should be able to see from any position if there is a customer in the café - only in this way is it possible to run the café with a single employee without annoying the customers. Ideally, there is even a direct line of sight out of the ice cream lab into the sales room - this way, the ice cream parlor operator can still finish producing his ice cream in the first few hours and still serve one or two customers on the side without stress and without needing extra sales staff. 

The second important aspect of sight lines is the conscious decision which areas of the café you don't want to show to the guest. The "classic" one that everyone really knows is the restrooms - in almost every establishment, these are hidden as well as possible, because no one wants to look closely at the restroom door during their visit. But there are other, much less obvious lines of sight. The dirty dishes, for example, should always be easily accessible (see the topic of walkways), but if possible placed out of the guest's line of sight. Who wants to look at the dirty dishes while enjoying their ice cream. This can be achieved - depending on the layout of the establishment - by positioning the sink area in a sensible way or by cleverly positioned viewing screens (which can again be used as advertising/decorative surfaces at the same time). Equally important: convenient but hidden storage areas in which e.g. rags or other utensils can be stored allow for a smooth flow and are still hidden from the guest's view.

The "invisible" store planning

Perhaps you have already noticed it while reading the article: You can ' t actually separate the points of workstations, walkways and sightlines - a perfect workflow only works when all three aspects are combined. That's why we call it: the "invisible" store design. 

But we also hope that you have become aware of how important these aspects are for smooth operations, optimal profitability of your store and the experience of your guests. And you have certainly also noticed that good shopfitting is more than just a pretty appearance - even if this is of course also an elementary part of it. 

So if you too are interested in a new interior design planning - one where the "visible" and the "invisible" parts of the planning are right - then we look forward to hearing from you. By the way, you can find more info on this topic and our planning approach here. 

Your Alois Krä GmbH