Cafe and restaurant architecture · Quick service
We designed a street-front burger restaurant.
An operation where orders are taken at the counter and nothing is served to the table. In a venue like this the first job of the design is to settle where the queue starts and where it ends. Below we set out how the order line is read from the street, why the room was split in two, and why the guest washroom was given as much attention as the dining room.
- Space type
- Burger restaurant, counter service
- Frontage
- Street front, two windows with a central entrance
- Scope
- Interior design, shopfront and visualisation
- Stage
- Design
Design principle
In a quick-service venue the queue is part of the architecture. A project that leaves the queue out of the plan produces, a week after opening, a line of people waiting between the tables.
01
The order line
The counter sits at the far end of the room, visible from the entrance. Someone walking in knows where to go without asking, and in a quick-service venue that is hundreds of directions the staff never have to give.
The menu boards were hung on the wall behind the counter in a single row rather than above it. Someone in the queue starts reading the menu before reaching the counter, and the ordering time shrinks while they are still queuing.
The till is at the left end of the counter and collection at the right. That split makes the queue one-directional: the person ordering and the person waiting for their order never meet at the same point.
02
Splitting the room in two
One room holds two different dwell times: the guest who eats and leaves in ten minutes and the group that sits for an hour. Putting them in the same zone makes both uncomfortable.
The zone near the queue and the counter was built with loose four-seat tables; the chairs are light and the tables can be joined. The zone along the shopfront is enclosed by banquettes, where the tables are fixed.
The split is made with the ceiling rather than a wall. Over the counter zone there is a black grid ceiling with spot lighting; over the seating zone the pendant bulbs come down. A guest works out which zone they are in by looking up.
03
Banquette and brand wall
The long banquette runs as a single piece against the wall. This kind of seating fits the most people into the least floor area; chairs are only needed on the outside.
The wall behind it was turned into timber slats in a diamond pattern, with the brand mark set at its centre as a circular relief. This is the wall the venue is photographed against; the frame the business will appear in on social media is decided by the design.
The tables were specified as wide timber tops. A burger service puts a plate, a paper basket, a sauce pot and a drink on the table at once, and a narrow top will not carry that.
04
The surface the message sits on
When the sentences a business wants to say are hung on the wall as lettering they usually read as a poster and become invisible within months. Here the sentences were embedded as neon inside green textured panels.
The panel sits on the brick wall as a framed field, and the frame makes the message resemble a picture rather than a sign. When the content changes only the neon changes; the wall stays as it is.
The two panels sit side by side on the same wall rather than facing each other. That leaves one side of the room as the message surface and the other as the quiet surface, so a guest facing either way is not reading the same sentence over and over.
05
Four materials and no more
The whole room is tied to four materials: brick, black metro tile, timber slats and a dark marble floor. In a quick-service venue, adding materials adds not only cost but maintenance.
What the four have in common is that they can carry wear. Hundreds of people pass through a room like this every day, and pale matt surfaces lose their opening-day appearance within six months.
Colour was left free in only three places: the yellow of the menu boards, the texture of the green panels and the warmth of the timber. Every other surface is black or dark grey, and the brand colour reads from a distance against that neutral ground.
06
Shopfront and display
The shopfront was built as two windows with a central entrance. A central door opens the room symmetrically, and at the hours when the queue reaches the door the inside is still visible through both windows.
No curtain or film was applied behind the shopfront glass. The strongest sign a quick-service venue has is the crowd inside it, and covering the glass switches that sign off.
The point nearest the door was given to the chilled display and the drinks cabinet. Someone coming in only for a drink never enters the room and never joins the queue.
07
The guest washrooms
The line most often cut in quick-service venues is the guest washroom. After the budget spent on the dining room, leaving this to a standard plumbing fit-out changes the guest’s verdict on the place retroactively.
We kept the material language related to the room: the same black metro tile, the same timber frames, the same dark grey paint. The floor, by contrast, was made pale; arriving after the dark dining room, that bright floor makes the area read larger than it is.
The basin run and the cubicle entrance were separated. Someone washing their hands does not block someone coming out of a cubicle, and in a small area that single decision is what keeps the queue from spilling into the corridor.
Decisions and common mistakes
| Item | Settled in the design | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|
| Queue | The counter is visible from the door and the till and collection ends are separated. | The queue is left out of the plan and forms between the tables. |
| Menu | The boards hang in a single row behind the counter and are read from the queue. | The menu sits above the counter and can only be read at the head of the line. |
| Seating | The fast zone got loose tables and the long-stay zone banquettes. | One type of table is repeated and the two dwell times disturb each other. |
| Shopfront glass | The glass was left clear; the crowd inside is the sign. | The glass is covered with film or a curtain and the strongest sign goes out. |
| Guest washroom | The same material family as the room, a pale floor, and separated basin and cubicle lines. | The budget runs out in the dining room and the washroom is left to a standard fit-out. |
Frequently asked
- How is the queue solved in a counter-service venue?
- By putting the queue into the plan as an element. Here the counter was moved to the far end so it is visible from the door, the menu boards were hung behind it so they can be read while waiting, and the till and collection ends were separated. Together those three decisions keep the queue one-directional and away from the tables.
- Can fast and long-staying guests share one room?
- They can if the zones are separated. Here the zone near the counter was built with light chairs and tables that join, and the zone along the shopfront with fixed banquettes. The split is made with the ceiling rather than a wall: a grid ceiling with spots over one zone, lowered pendants over the other. A guest works out which zone they are in by looking up.
- How many materials should a restaurant use?
- In a heavily used room, four is usually enough. This project uses brick, black metro tile, timber slats and a dark marble floor, and all four can carry wear. Adding materials raises not only the initial cost but the replacement and maintenance line. Colour was left free at three points and every other surface kept neutral.
- Can we commission the design only?
- You can. We offer the design, the visuals and the construction drawings separately. If another firm is building it, we prepare the detail drawings and material schedule so they can start straight away — nothing is left half-finished.
Let’s talk about your space.
If you have the dimensions of the shell and the length of the frontage, let us sit down. Tell us the queue you expect at the busiest hour and we will build the plan around it.