cafe interior

Often, choosing to go to a café is a lot about the experience alongside the food and drink. Customers can choose to relax and spend time in a café, which is why it is important to consider a customer’s experience overall when considering the design of your café small business.

The design of your café is going to make or break the experience for a customer, whether they are coming in quickly for a takeout or wanting to take a seat.

Be as Visual as Possible

For certain business industries, images and visuals can be more powerful than words. For example, when it comes to a café business providing food and drink, displaying what you have on offer can be more persuasive than describing your offerings.

Customers in a café will be more swayed by sweet treats they can see on display, or food pictures on a menu, in a bigger way than if you had nothing for them to see.

Therefore, you might want to think about display cabinets for certain items and photos for your menus, whether on tables or on large boards behind the main counter.

Be Creative About Seating

You will usually have more flexibility when it comes to seating in a café than a more formal restaurant — and the more seating you have available, the more customers you can encourage to sit and spend money in your place of business.

For a café, think creatively by embracing tall standing tables, window tables, tables for individual people, groups, and how different shapes and sizes can enable you to fit more seating in overall.

Use Digital Signage

Digital signage can be an advantage for many reasons. For example, it can draw more foot traffic into your café, and it can help display the brand information you want your customers to see when inside your business, and it is also great for providing menu boards for your customers. Digital signage is therefore not only an attractive aesthetic update but also one that can help to boost your clientele.

Introduce a Clear Layout

Cafés can get busy, especially if you are offering takeout service for hot drinks, too. Naturally, this foot traffic is what you want, but it can run into problems if you do not have a clear layout within your café design.

Customers should be able to easily identify where to go to order, where to go to be seated (if applicable) and where to stand if they are waiting for their order. Without a clear layout or system, you can risk people queue jumping, being confused, blocking entries and exits, or possibly disrupting another customer’s experience, too.

Therefore, do all you can to signpost the system for customers; if customers need to wait to be seated, put up a sign, and implement clear signs for where the till and waiting areas are.

Also, think about walkways and safety when setting up tables in relation to keeping standing space free.

Lark Begin
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Lark Begin is a digital marketer from Ottawa, Canada. Lark is an SEO Master, PPC expert and content writer. She helps many small businesses get ranked on Google each day.