It’s not just your gut feeling anymore
– studies have shown ambiance can affect everything from perceptions on
responsiveness and reliability, how much and how fast customers eat, how much
they spend, how long they stay in the restaurant, and more. And guess what?
Decor is one of the main contributing factors.
Before diners smell or taste the food,
they judge your establishment based on the décor and colors surrounding them
and how those things make them feel. You might have the best manually brewed
coffee in town, or the best buffet spread, but if the atmosphere is not right,
your customers won’t be able to enjoy the experience. Good or bad, you can
expect their experience to be shared on social media.
Restaurant owners understand this
reality, and now studies have shown just how important the ambiance of your
eatery really is.
Study and Findings
No one cares about your coffee
Research by Empathic Marketing shows that for cafes, the order of
importance for customers is:
1.
Air conditioning
2.
Wi-Fi and electric sockets
3.
Food taste and quality
4.
Taste and quality of the coffee
Coffee placing 4th in order of importance for cafe customers behind air conditioning and wifi. If you’re a frequent cafe visitor, this finding might not surprise you, but a number of cafe owners still find it surprising.
The importance of restaurant ambiance
A study from Rochester Institute of Technology, shows that ambiance play a
key role in determining a customer’s eating experience. Researchers looked at
lighting, color, music, background noises, layout, aesthetics, and tableware to
find out if any of them mattered and by how much. They found that physical
environment is the second most important contributor to a restaurant’s image.
Furniture was confirmed as an important part of interior design, but design is
a less important factor than comfort. Preferred material for hard furniture in
restaurants is wood; and for soft furniture cotton and leather.
Although choice of
color was not perceived as one of the more important factors in interior design
of a restaurant, color was found to be more important by those participants who
reported willingness to pay more money for one of the interior design factors.
Most people preferred group of warm colours, like red and yellow which could be
because those colors stimulate appetite.
