What is a restaurant layout (or floor plan)?
A restaurant layout, also known as a floor plan, is a map that defines all your venue areas: the entrance area, bar, dining room, kitchen, dishwashing and pantry rooms, server pick-up areas, bathrooms, storage spaces and staff rooms. It's a digital (or paper-based) overview of where everything in your restaurant is, helping to optimise workflow, guest experience and operational efficiency.
While a well-planned restaurant layout ensures efficient operations, the seating arrangement itself is a critical factor in delivering both comfort and profitability. Let's look at how to determine the right space allocation for seating.
How much space do you need for a functional seating layout?
In most restaurants, 60% of the building space is reserved for the dining area with the remaining 40% hosting the kitchen, storage and preparation areas. When it comes to designing restaurant floor space, hospitality interior designers generally recommend an allowance of 12-15 square feet per person. However, in a fine-dining restaurant, where there needs to be a sense of luxury (and this includes space) they recommend giving each person 18-20 square feet.
You will also need to factor space in your floor plan between occupied chairs (around 18 inches) so diners can move chairs in and out of the table with ease and space. This will be determined by the style of your restaurant, but most customers won’t be keen to rub shoulders with strangers when they eat, so leave a gap of at least 4ft to give each party some privacy and allow space for staff to serve them comfortably.
While there are recommendations for space between tables and chairs, the seating capacity will be determined by a whole host of other factors – from the location of the kitchen and how waiting staff access it to the style and size of furniture you choose.
4 things to consider when designing or optimising your restaurant seating layout
1. Flow
Before you squeeze tables into every available space, think carefully about the practicalities and how operations will flow during service. If you are providing table service, waiting staff will require space to take orders, deliver them and clear away. Staff will also need to be able to easily reach the kitchen to collect food and serve it, so keep space for a service corridor to every table. Don’t forget to provide a waiting area for customers in your floor plan before they are seated and a clear route to the restrooms.
2. Comfort vs profit
Before you choose seating for your restaurant, consider how it will impact the customer experience and how it will support the desired ambience you want for your venue. Squeezing lots of tables in and supplying hard seats might stop diners lingering so you can turn tables quicker during every service, but they may have stayed for dessert and coffee if those seats had been more comfortable. Strike the right balance between comfort and profit to create the perfect customer experience.
3. Accessibility
Under the Equality Act 2010, restaurants must accommodate people with disabilities and ensure their business is accessible to all. When designing your restaurant’s floor plan, ensure part of it is accessible to wheelchair users, including disabled toilet access.
4. Zoning
Will your restaurant be catering to different customer demographics during one service? For example, will you be welcoming families alongside customers attending a business lunch? If so, consider creating seating zones to keep customers with differing priorities separate. Give families the bigger tables at the back where there’s space for prams and highchairs and away from the booths at the front where a business lunch can be conducted in a private and quiet environment.
How to optimise your restaurant seating layout
Once you’ve determined the important considerations, you will be in a better position to optimise the space you have. To do this:
- Maximise your seating capacity – Research the different types of furniture available to see how it can best work within the space you have. Banquette seating along one wall is a great space-saver. Booths can accommodate more people in a narrow section and provide more intimacy (for the aforementioned business meetings). If you have a bar area, add stools in one section to host solo diners or couples looking for a quick snack.
- Consider table size – Choose tables that can flexibly accommodate different-sized bookings according to seasonal demand. Being able to separate tables into more twos for Valentine’s Day or join them all together for larger groups during the festive season will be invaluable.
- Design a restaurant floor plan – If you’re struggling to see how the space will work, sketch it out, either with pen and paper or by using table management software to get a better idea of the flow and how easily it will be to turn tables.
- Ask your guests – When your customers book, check the purpose of their visit and ask them if they have a seating preference. Do they want a booth, or a window seat, or prefer to sit at the bar? By considering their needs, you’ll guarantee guest satisfaction as soon as they arrive.
How can technology support optimising restaurant seating?
So, your restaurant layout ideas have become a reality and you feel confident in the physical aspect of your restaurant seating strategy. For well-established restaurant operations that are routinely finding that managing space is an issue implementing software to manage the situation is a solid investment.
At Access, we help our customers implement Access Collins, a booking system which includes table management functionality that handles everything digitally and intuitively maximises space, saving you time and energy while providing a clear picture for all staff for every service and booking. This kind of software usually features drag-and-drop functionality which makes it easy to lay out your venue for service and see which tables will be used and when. There’s no need to spend hours creating a manual floor plan for each service, which we all know can be thrown into disarray with one cancellation.
Other features often included in table management and booking software which support a restaurant manager include:
- A digital view of your table plan for full visibility at a glance,
- Automated table assignments to streamline guest seating,
- Advanced planning tools to prepare for peak times, events and seasonal demand,
- Pre-visit customer data collection (e.g., pre-orders, allergen preferences).
Take control of your restaurant’s seating strategy today
Creating a restaurant seating layout doesn’t have to be complicated – in fact, as a feature of our restaurant booking and reservation software, you can manage all your table management processes in one digital space.
In this article, we’ve explored the benefits of table management strategy and all the things you need to think about to get started. And we’ve looked at how you can do it.
Find out more about Access Collins’ table management tool and how it can help support your restaurant seating strategy. Book a demo today to get your venue operating in full swing.