Successful Restaurants Have Photo Appeal

The success of brick-and-mortar retail is becoming tied to photo-appeal. Social media has made the design critical to the success of a retail asset and to creating a user experience. This is particularly true at restaurants, and can be key to standing out among the pack.

“Currently, it is critical to a restaurant businesses success to have a space where a person’s sensory experience shapes how they feel about that restaurant,” Blake Kaplan, VP at JLL, tells GlobeSt.com. “As the menu items and how they are presented are among these experiences, there are other important factors as well. These factors include signage, décor, scents, music, lighting and layout. In a competitive food industry, the only way to survive is by combining these factors in making it an experience the customers will never forget. Restaurants need to have interior changes every three to five years to create a new experience and keep the consistent customers coming in and drive new customers in as well.”

Landlords should take an active role in curating spaces that are conducive to social media photos. “They should look at restaurants design the same way you look at their financial credibility,” says Kaplan. “Both aspects are key determinates of the tenant’s success. Specific things a landlord should look at is the signage, décor, layout of the space, and a visual uniqueness to what is currently on/in the market.”

Landlords can also curate a tenant mix that hits the right social-media quality. “Owners can support experience driven restaurants by leaning towards more unique and trend setting restaurant concepts rather than a national tenant with a large financial backing,” says Kaplan. “This will not only create a cool new feel to the owner’s center, but also bring economic stability to your regional business that ignite the growth of more unique restaurant ideas. We are seeing this across the country with developers who focused on national credit users being open minded to the regional players to bring in the local cult following.”

This is a long-term trend—not a passing fad, but it might move from concept to concept. “The experience driven concepts will be a long-term trend.  The craving for finding the next “cool” thing will always be a habit in younger generations. For this reason, people will seek out restaurants that they not only like eating at but also restaurants they like being at,” Kaplan adds. “This could not be a more exciting time to be a foodie. Restauranteurs are creating the new evolution of food meets experience.”

The trend is especially prevalent in San Diego and Orange County. “Instead of sitting down, quickly eating your meal, and leaving, people are now treating restaurants as an event,” says Kaplan. “People are seeking connectedness, aesthetics, and intrigue that only experience concepts can offer. The wave started in both these markets and the brewery component has been such a hit in San Diego it’s rotating over to Orange County.”