• 6 Common Dining Room Floor Plan Mistakes

Did you know that people sitting at a good table will purchase 15% more than people sitting at a bad table.

People sitting in a booth will buy more than people sitting at any other type of table.

Stephani Robson is a Ph.D. and an expert in consumer seating behavior. She's also the author of Seating Charts That Work (6 Common Dining Room Floor Plan Mistakes and How to Avoid Them) that appears in the July 2010 issue of Restaurant Startup & Growth.

Dining Room Mistake No. 1. Having the Wrong Table Mix.

Many restaurants have too many tables for four ("four-tops) because it allows you to seat parties of one, two, three or four at any of these tables. If your restaurant is quiet, it doesn't matter. In a busy restaurant,  you are wasting 50% of your space when you seat a party of two at a table for four. Analyze your restaurant statistics. What proportion of your guests are deuces? Do you need more tables for your parties of two? If you have too many deuces, you can easily combine two of these tables and make it suitable for a party of four. You can't divide a table designed for four people in half.

Dining Room Mistake No. 2. Putting Your Two-Tops in the Wrong Place.

In almost every case, guests strongly prefer to sit with at least one side of their table "anchored" by walls or other impermeable structures, especially when they are in a party of two. So put your deuces along walls or partitions, next to some kind of design element that helps your guests define their personal space.

A bad idea is to place deuces down the center of the dining room.

Dining Room Mistake No. 3. Ignoring Breezes and Blasts.

A cold, wind-blown guest is a miserable guest. It is not going to help your guests stay longer and buy more.

Dining Room Mistake No. 4. Forcing Guests to See What They Don't Want to See.

Guests want to see four things when they dine at your restaurant: What's on the table in front of them, the people they are dining with, the view (if you have one), and at least some of the rest of the dining room. People feel more comfortable when they have some idea of what is happening in the space around them, so don't make booth backs too high. Guests don't want to see things like wait stations, restroom doors and storage areas.

Dining Room Mistake No. 5. Keeping Staff From Seeing What They Need To See.

Great servers always know what needs to be done on their tables. Having partitions, high walls, and odd configurations make it more difficult for a server to properly serve their tables.

Dining Room Mistake No. 6. Hobbling Your Staff With Bad Service Area Design.

In many restaurants, service areas aren't so much designed as plopped into the dining room almost as an afterthought. Staff may have to walk too far to get an extra fork or refill water or coffee. Put your service areas no father than 25 feet from any table. As a rule of thumb, no table should be more than 60 feet from the food pickup area.

You can read the entire article in the July 2010 issue of Restaurant Startup & Growth.

To subscribe to the Restaurant Startup & Growth FREE email newsletter (highly recommended) or get a few FREE issues of the printed magazine, or purchase a subscription go to:

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You can read more about restaurant seating and how it affects sales at:

http://www.informedesign.umn.edu/_news/dec_v02-p.pdf

You can read a copy of Stephani Robson's report called Don't Sit So Close To Me: Restaurant Table Characteristics and Guest Satisfaction at:

http://ehotelier.com/hospitality-news/item.php?id=15569_0_11_0_C

• After School Restaurant Snacking Becoming More Popular

As a parent, you may not like it, but quick-serve and fast-casual restaurants are targeting high school-age students during the 3 p.m. hour.

All types of restaurants are doing all they can to bring in additional patrons at off hours. Subway, McDonald's and others have been going after the breakfast crowd. Many bars and restaurants go for the 5 p.m. after work crowd.

The new trend is restaurants going for the after school high school crowd. Many parents are working later. Many students are participating in after school activities. This trend has different types of restaurants marketing especially towards high school students and their free time between school and a later than normal dinner at home due to parents working longer hours.

• Reading Books On the IPad, Kindle and Other Devices

Researchers have found that reading books on an IPad, Kindle or other electronic device is 10.7% slower than reading on paper. Reading on the IPad is faster than reading on a Kindle.

I am not surprised that reading on an electronic device would be slower. I am surprised that it is only 10.7% slower.

To read the entire article, go to:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/200491/reading_on_paper_is_faster_than_ibooks_on_the_ipad.html?tk=hp_new

• Budgeting and the Tanning and Limo Tax

As the manager or owner of a small business, do you handle your budgeting like our government?

We now have a 10% surtax on the use of all ultraviolet indoor tanning beds. Getting a tan on an ultraviolet indoor tanning bed may or may not be healthy. The U.S. government is looking at taking in 2.7 billion dollars from the tax which would be used to help finance the cost of expanding health care to those who are currently uninsured.

I am pretty sure that those who are in charge of setting up the implementation and collection of the law will be the biggest winners. My guess is that the government is likely to collect far less than a billion from the new tax.

I also have no doubt the 2.7 billion dollars in projected income has already been spent. So, where is that money going to come from?

Recently NYC has decided to get rid of a limo tax. That was a tax that NYC has been using within its budget. It's a tax on those non-taxi medallion cars that pick up passengers. Official medallion cabs are permitted to pick up passengers on the street. Black car services or limos are only supposed to pick up passengers who have called the service on the telephone. They are not permitted to pick up passengers who are just walking on the streets who did not call ahead of time. Many of these "black car" cabs pick up passengers from the street anyhow. NYC tried to tax them. The result...no income. The city budgeted lots of income from the tax, but received just about none.

Now back to your retail store. When you make up a budget, you can't underestimate your expenses or overestimate our income. You can't make up your deficits by adding a new tax. You can't borrow money from your future income. Retailers have to get it right. There is not much room for error. I'm in favor of only electing government officials who have owned or managed a retail business.