How to Design a Restaurant Floor Plan in 7 Steps + Examples

Planning a restaurant is what most people would consider the most difficult. However, it only gets more complicated when deciding on how to design your floor plan so that you can maximize space and make proper use of resources for an optimal business model. Here are some steps in designing a successful restaurant floor plan.

The first step is to draw the outline of the building in pencil, then move on to fill it in with markers. Next, you should use a ruler and compass to draw out the square footage of the floor plan. Then, you should take into account all of the necessary elements such as tables, chairs, and walls. Lastly, create an elevation drawing by using a ruler and compass again to measure how high your roof will be from ground level.

A restaurant floor plan is a diagram of your restaurant’s layout, including the dining room, kitchen, storage, restrooms, and entrances. The greatest restaurant floor layouts aid operational efficiency while also communicating your brand to guests. The layout of your restaurant will vary depending on the sort of establishment, but a 40/60 split between the kitchen and dining area is industry standard.

A layout is an important part of opening a restaurant. When applying for business licenses in most cities, you’ll need to provide your restaurant floor plan. It’s also a good idea to include your floor plan in your restaurant’s business plan if you’re looking for investors.

The most essential thing to consider when planning your restaurant floor plan is that it must allow for the movement of numerous aspects throughout the space. All of the following things should be considered while designing your perfect restaurant layout:

• People flow: your employees, customers, and suppliers
• Food and beverage delivery and sales are both parts of the product flow.
• Electricity, water, air, order information, and payment data are all part of the utility and information flow.

In seven easy steps, you can create a restaurant floor plan:

1. Determine the number of operational restaurant spaces

Every restaurant requires a number of functioning restaurant areas. The size of each will vary depending on the design of your business and whether people dine in or take meals to go.

The following are the key operating sections of the restaurant floor plan:

• Your restaurant’s entrance and waiting area serve as a billboard. It should convey your idea and persuade passers-by to come inside. The kind of institution determines the welcoming and waiting spaces once inside. If you have wait times, this location should be seriously considered for elegant and informal meals. This area might be minimum for fast service and cafe ideas, particularly if you have a bar for counter service. All restaurants’ entranceways should be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) rules.
• Dining areas: To offer enough seating and traffic flow, restaurant dining sections normally need 60 percent of the total restaurant space. However, delivery-only businesses and quick-service restaurants may not need as much space. If you’re using a point-of-sale (POS) system, you’ll also need to think about where you’ll put the terminals in your dining room.
• Kitchen: The kitchen takes up roughly 40% of the area in typical restaurant floor layouts. This may seem excessive for a location that your customers will never see, but it is the lifeblood of your company. Gas pipes, water lines, electrical wiring, floor drains, and ventilation hoods are also required in kitchens.
• Bathrooms: By hooking into local plumbing and water lines, you may save money by placing restrooms near your cooking area. It’s also a good idea to have a staff-only bathroom, depending on the size of your area. Keep in mind that your restrooms must also meet ADA requirements.
• Delivery entrances and loading docks: In most cases, supplies are not delivered via the same doors as consumers. For vendor deliveries, large commercial buildings will already have loading docks or rear doors. It is a good idea to install a delivery entry to your restaurant if your building does not already have one. Customers shouldn’t have to pass over vegetable boxes to get to a table!
• Most restaurants need an in-the-back office to store sensitive company information such as employee papers, tax paperwork, computer equipment, and cash reserves. In certain locations, firms are also required to offer break rooms for their employees. A staff locker room, if you have the capacity, is a great addition for your team to change from street clothes to work clothing and safely store their personal things while they work.

COVID-19 Tip: During COVID-19, it’s even more important to designate staff change areas. You may prevent introducing pollutants into your restaurant by providing a place for your employees to change clothing and put on personal protective equipment (PPE).

Depending on your restaurant’s idea, you’ll also need to include optional spaces. These are some of them:

• Bar and Counters of Service: For restaurants with a strong cocktail, coffee, or juice programs, a bar area is a must. If you enable customers to sit at your bar, be sure that at least a section of it is ADA accessible. Counters or bar sections are also required in delis, sushi shops, and other quick-service restaurants. The location of your bar or service counter is generally determined by the availability of floor drains, electricity lines, and water lines.
• Areas for takeaway and delivery pickup: If you do a lot of takeout and delivery, you should set aside a room to store finished orders and allow for quick collection. To keep business flowing, full-service restaurants with dine-in visitors and delivery services should divide the two categories of customers.
• Outside areas: Don’t overlook your outdoor areas! For some eateries, the front entry is their only outside area. In temperate climes, though, you’ll want to add outside patios or sidewalk seating to your dining room.

Make a list of all the places that your restaurant need. Consider how many people will be working or dining in each location at the same time, as well as how long they will be there. Design to devote the greatest space in your floor plan to places where the most people will gather for the longest period of time. Dining rooms at full-service restaurants, where customers spend two hours every meal, will naturally be larger than those in burger joints, where the majority of customers order to-go.

2. Take into account the available space

You’ll want to discover electricity lines, water lines, load-bearing walls, and spots, where floor drains, may be placed before you fall in love with a specific restaurant plan. To decide the most practical locations for your kitchen equipment, toilets, and bar equipment, get a copy of your restaurant’s drawings or talk with a contractor. You should also check with your landlord and the local zoning board to see if there are any limitations that may limit your options.

Before you start designing your restaurant plan, you should be aware of the following:

• The availability of gas, power, ethernet cables, phone lines, and water connections will have an impact on how you arrange your restaurant area.
• Interior features that can’t be moved: Some walls and columns in your restaurant area may be immovable. Before you create your plans, it’s best to know what you can and can’t modify.
• Most business buildings have guidelines concerning where deliveries may be received and where entrances and exits can be located.
• Zoning restrictions: This is mostly an issue for ideas that wish to incorporate drive-thru service. Drive-thrus may be prohibited by local legislation, and sidewalk sitting and outdoor patios may need specific permissions. The location where you may vent cooking fumes and smoke is also determined by zoning rules.

Start using an existing restaurant space as a starting point. Starting with a blank commercial facility is far more expensive than repurposing an established restaurant to match your demands. Find a commercial real estate agent with restaurant expertise to assist you in relocating your restaurant. They may also help you with loans and financing choices.

3. Plan the layout of your kitchen

The kitchen at your restaurant has the highest technical requirements of any area of the establishment. That is why you should begin in the kitchen. To offer enough area for food prep, cooking, and server pickup, most restaurants assign 30% to 40% of their total space to the kitchen. There’s more to consider than simply eating.

In addition, a restaurant kitchen must provide for sufficient flow of:

• Food: Raw ingredients must flow into the kitchen, and cooked food must leave the kitchen.
• Staff: Cooking and cleaning crews need a functional workstation, while service crews require a functional pickup area.
• Cooks need to be able to observe orders as they come in and depart the kitchen swiftly.
• Cooking odors, steam, and smoke must all leave the structure. Cooking fat and wastewater must also be disposed of properly.

A restaurant kitchen requires the following items in order to maintain an effective workflow:

• Gas lines are used to power culinary appliances.
• Electrical lines: For powering cooking and ventilation equipment, refrigerators, freezers, and point-of-sale (POS) equipment such as printers and kitchen display systems (KDS)
• Water lines are required to feed dishwashers and sinks, as well as specialized beverage equipment such as soft drink dispensers and espresso machines, as well as sprinkler systems, and fire suppression equipment.
• Refrigerators, ice makers, ice bins, and sinks all have floor drains.
• Grease trap connections: To prevent cooking fats from entering public sewage systems through wastewater and cooking equipment.

After you’ve determined the optimum location in your restaurant for your kitchen equipment, it’s time to consider the layout of the kitchen itself. Restaurants often employ one of three commercial kitchen designs: Assembly Line, Island, or Zone.

It’s a good idea to evaluate your kitchen layout before installing any permanent equipment, no matter which arrangement suits your demands. Allow employees to go through processes to verify there are no bottlenecks or rubbing elbows. After that, you may secure the equipment.

Using Software is a Pro Tip. To test your restaurant floor layout concepts, use applications like SmartDraw and RoomSketcher. Most companies provide free software for up to five-floor designs.

Clouds and Ghost Kitchens

Ghost Kitchens work in the same way as stationary food trucks do. (Photo courtesy of Kitchen Podular)

Delivery-only restaurants that depend on third-party online ordering applications are known as ghost kitchens. They’re also known as “cloud kitchens” at times. These restaurants do not need public facilities such as a dining area or public restrooms. They work in the same way as stationary food trucks do. Because ghost kitchens depend on delivery services if your location allows it, installing a drive-thru window is a great option. Any of the three kitchen layouts listed above may work for a ghost kitchen or cloud kitchen, depending on your company volume.

4. Plan the layout of your restaurant’s dining room

Restaurant eating spaces typically take up around 60% of the entire restaurant space. What you put in this area depends on the sort of restaurant you have. Checking with your local building permit office for occupancy limitations for your facility is the first step in this process. You should also read the ADA accessibility requirements carefully. Having all of this information on hand guarantees that the layout and floor plan of your eating room comply with all relevant regulatory requirements.

Most restaurant POS and reservation systems feature table layout options that may be customized. Play around with the built-in floorplan tools in your POS or reservation system to discover your optimal table setup.

These industry-standard dimensions should aid in the planning of seats and traffic flow:

Suggested Area Per Diner on the Restaurant Floor Plan

The next step is to figure out how many tables you’ll need and how they’ll be laid up.

Table and Chair Spacing in a Restaurant

Of course, the amount of space you provide for tables and chairs is largely determined by your restaurant’s design and the sorts of seating you use. By making creative use of wall space and promoting optimal traffic flow, mixing table types maximizes eating space. Freestanding tables may be moved to suit big gatherings or to modify the appearance and flow of your room. Booths make the most of available wall space, and combining them with tables provides customers with a variety of sitting options. Countertop-height tables are used in several dining designs to give visual variation.

COVID-19 Tip: In most jurisdictions, social distancing standards mandate a minimum of 6 feet between consumers, whether they are eating inside or outside, standing or sitting. Remove useless tables from your dining rooms or prohibit clients from sitting at them to help you stick to these rules.

Keep in Mind Your Restaurant Tech

Your restaurant dining room has another important component that supports the effective flow of your personnel and customers: information flow. You must convey order information from customers to your kitchen and payment information from customers to your payment processor, whether you utilize a register or a POS system. So, in your dining room layout, don’t forget to add server stations with card readers or POS terminals, and remember to arrange these instruments near power outlets.

If you utilize a cloud POS or an iPad POS, you’ll have to consider your walls a lot. Your signal will be weaker if there are additional barriers between your POS terminals and your Wi-Fi network. For cloud POS users, open floor layouts are ideal. You may still have a dining area with walls and comfortable nooks if you plan ahead and include Wi-Fi signal boosters in your design.

Areas for Dining Outside

Check with your local zoning authority to see whether you need permission to build a sidewalk sitting area. (Picture courtesy of Pixabay)

Plan enough walking space between tables and umbrellas in outdoor areas (if you use them). Make sure to include large paths and lanes that run alongside plants and walls in your design. You must give adequate room on important thoroughfares for wheelchairs to pass, just as you do in your inside areas. You’ll also need a Wi-Fi signal enhancer if you want to take tableside payments.

Install outdoor pods to enable social separation and ventilation throughout the winter months, according to COVID-19. Pop-up igloos and bubble tents keep body heat in and the weather out, allowing you to increase the number of people in your restaurant.

5. Plan the layout of the restrooms, entryways, and Waiting Rooms

Because all of your restaurant’s guest-facing sections must be ADA accessible, it’s a smart idea to design them all simultaneously. Wheelchair-accessible doorways are required, as well as at least one wheelchair-accessible toilet stall in each bathroom.

Restrooms

By hooking into neighboring lines, placing your bathrooms near kitchens may save you money on your plumbing. If that isn’t possible, you’ll have to totally plumb this area, so choose your restrooms wisely. This isn’t a piece that can be readily moved about the room. You’ll need to make sure that at least one of the restrooms or stalls is wheelchair accessible.

For wheelchair accessibility, the ADA mandates at least 60 inches of turning space between fixtures. To remain under ADA rules, small establishments may only offer single-occupancy bathrooms.

Entrances

You’ll need to consider ADA adaptations if your doorway has stairs or a step up or down from ground level. If you can put a ramp beside any steps, it is typically the most straightforward option. A separate, wheelchair-accessible entrance or a wheelchair lift are other options.

Your restaurant’s idea and identity should be clearly communicated at the entrance. Because this is the first visual and tactile encounter your customers get when they enter your company, bring whatever design decisions you make in the dining room forward to the entrance. Alternatively, you may simply personalize your door to match your signage and business idea.

Waiting Rooms

Your entry may be basic for cafe, bistro, and diner ideas, particularly if you have a bar or countertop where customers can wait. If you require a designated waiting area in front, design it to allow for traffic movement in and out and, if at all feasible, seats. A couple of comfortable seats would suffice, but a bench sitting against the wall will make greater use of the little space available. Adding outside chairs to your waiting area might also be a nice option if it fits in your region and environment. A few patio-style chairs or benches would suffice.

Encourage clients to wait in their automobiles until their orders or tables are ready, according to COVID-19. Most restaurant POS and reservation systems feature SMS text messaging facilities that enable you to text customers as needed.

6. Include bars, Counters of Service, and delivery areas in your design.

The addition of a bar or countertop eating area to your restaurant’s floor layout may be quite beneficial. If space permits, you should consider one if you haven’t already. Because guests may purchase beverages while waiting, it’s a more lucrative use of space than a huge waiting room. Furthermore, since diners demand less elbow room at a bar than they do at a table, it generates a small-footprint eating environment.

A bar or countertop that shares a back wall with the kitchen is ideal for positioning, particularly in compact rooms. This allows you to connect bar sinks to your current plumbing or add a pass-through window to your kitchen for a diner, cafe-style coffee shop, or bistro restaurant idea.

Counters for placing orders

Quick service restaurants like pizza shops and burger joints ring in customer orders at a central counter, equipped with registers or POS terminals. This counter is usually the only separation between the kitchen and the dining area. Counters for placing orders typically only need electrical outlets and an internet connection to process payments. Many restaurants also use this real estate to store dry goods and paper supplies under the counter.

Service Counters

Delis, bakeries, and slice shops perform most of their business from a counter. Depending on the food you serve, this counter may need to support refrigerated or heated displays. These service counters are like mini-kitchens and need access to electric and water lines as well as drainage and ventilation.

Areas for Delivery and Takeout

Many eateries are finding it difficult to meet the growing demand for online ordering and delivery. You should set aside a space exclusively for drivers and clients to pick up delivery and takeout orders, whether you offer takeout and delivery with your in-house personnel or utilize third-party delivery services. If you have a large delivery service, it’s a good idea to have the pickup location close to—or in—your kitchen.

This section may be a series of shelves within your front entry or a drive-thru window, depending on your company level. Assume your restaurant is a delivery-only operation, such as a ghost kitchen or cloud kitchen. In such a situation, warming cabinets or counters with heat lamps will be necessary to maintain your food at the proper temperature.

COVID-19 Tip: During COVID-19 lockdowns, several eateries switched to internet ordering and delivery. Convert a bar or service counter to your delivery pickup area if you don’t want to keep it as an ongoing component of your company after COVID-19. Create barriers using tables that were removed from your seating design to direct delivery vehicles to the right location.

7. Back office and Staff Areas

Last but not least, you should make room for your supervisors and employees. These sections don’t need to be large—after all, they don’t produce income and your staff shouldn’t be spending a lot of time in them—but they should be well-designed.

In the kitchen design, there is a delivery entry and a staff locker area. (Image courtesy of CADPRO)

Locker Room and Staff Entrance

A separate staff entrance eliminates traffic congestion between your employees and consumers. A delivery entry may also be used as a staff entrance. Employee items are kept out of work areas throughout their shifts in locker rooms, which might assist your team concentrate. If they detect employee belongings in food service areas, many health inspectors will deduct points from your health department rating. Anything that enters your restaurant from the outside is a potential cause of foodborne disease.

Back office

Your restaurant’s in the back office doesn’t need to be large, but it does need to be secure. Your in the back office holds sensitive information like hiring documents, tax information, and business licenses. It also holds valuable items like your computer, security system hub, and safe. There should always be at least two lockable doors between your safe and the outside world. Your office door should be solid, and it should lock from the inside.

Regulations for COVID-19 Floor Plans

COVID-19 laws differ depending on where you are. Check with your local health agency for any relevant rules. Check out the CDC’s restaurant safety guidelines to safeguard the safety of your employees and guests. The two most crucial criteria in providing a safe dining environment during COVID-19 are social separation and sufficient airflow.

Consider the methods utilized by pop-up eateries and tactical urbanism while discussing how to weather COVID-19. Both employ low-cost materials to construct temporary structures. Consider the materials used at your favorite farmers’ market. Keep in mind that the table below is only a guideline. You’ll need to contact local zoning officials for clearance and instruction every time you want to utilize outside public space.

Conclusion

Your restaurant floor plan dictates your entire operation’s workflow, from kitchen and dining areas to customer amenities like waiting Rooms and restrooms. Allocating about 40% of your total area to the kitchen is the industry standard, with 60% for your customer-facing areas. The layout that works best for your restaurant will depend on your restaurant type and sales volume. The best restaurant floor plans support the smooth flow of employees, customers, food, and information through the restaurant space.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you draw a restaurant layout?

A: You start with a rough sketch, and then work out the details in Photoshop or your favorite design program.