1. Restaurant Concept – Your restaurant concept is a creative theme that tells an emotional story about the restaurant. Great restaurant concepts connect the food and beverage offering, history, style and fashion, culture and environment. Your concept should direct your awesome atmosphere. For example a simple French Bistro may not only look like small café in France, but the wait staff could have heavy French accents, décor can reflects dramatic street scenes from a French town and menu items are inspired by famous French authors verses an edgy and hip bar may leverage industrial materials for decor, blast techno tunes and showcase very abstract art. These restaurants have very different atmospheres.

2. Customers – Who are your ideal customers? Think of your restaurant as a party where you’re in charge of the guest list. Is your party going to be wild and loud, family-friendly, elegant, business-like, quiet, romantic, a place to hang all day or a casual dinner? The customers in your restaurant will play a big part in setting the atmosphere of your restaurant.

3. Cleanliness – This is a biggie for your restaurant’s atmosphere. If things are dirty and disorganised, it will drag the energy down. Make cleanliness and organisation a priority in the front and the back of the house. Remember to keep the bathrooms well-maintained, too. They are a great indicator of how clean the rest of your restaurant is.

4. Staff – Your hostess, maître d’, manager, waitstaff, bartenders, busboys, chefs, sous-chefs, cooks and kitchen staff will all contribute to the atmosphere and energy in your restaurant. Your employees should be friendly and helpful and their interaction with customers should match the concept. For example, if your restaurant is an intimate Italian place where couples come to spend a romantic evening, your staff should probably be attentive, but low-key. If your restaurant is a loud, interactive experience, servers will probably be more involved with customers. For more on this, see our this post that talks about “guest sensitivity” . Your staff’s uniforms should match the restaurant concept. Employees in sports bar may wear jeans and sports jerseys while staff at an elegant fine-dining restaurant might wear shirts and ties. Staff should be neat and tidy (see cleanliness in #3)

5. Lighting – Lighting is incredibly important in setting the tone at your restaurant. There are businesses that specialise in how to properly light a room to create an ambiance. Again, remember to match the lighting to the concept. Grand crystal chandeliers and candlelight would be appropriate for an elegant, romantic restaurant. Fun, colourful lighting would work well for a child-themed restaurant and natural light for a “green” healthy-themed spot. Consider how your restaurant will be lit at different times of day. Many restaurants use dimmers to change the intensity of light over the course of the day. If you are relying on natural light, make sure that you’re not getting baked in the morning or the afternoon by using window treatments and have other light sources on cloudy days.

6. Colour – The colours that you use in your logo and other branding touch-points should be consistent with the colours that you use in your restaurant such as wall colour, floor colours, window treatments and furniture. Colours have been shown to have an impact on appetite. Warm colours increase appetite and cool colours, specifically blue, have been shown to decrease appetite. There is also some interesting research on the psychology of colour that can help you with your colour choices. Again, make sure that the colours you choose fit your concept. For example, bright green for a healthy, vegetarian restaurant.

7. Texture – the sense of touch can enhance an atmosphere and your branding. Cool, sleek surfaces like marble will have a different impact than rough, rustic wood. Consider the texture on walls, floors, furniture and anything else that customers will see or touch.

8. Artwork – Think about what you will place on the walls to enhance the atmosphere. Large oil paintings would enhance a sophisticated restaurant while kitschy folk art made from old utensils might amp up the ambiance at a farm to table concept.

9. Menu design – In addition to reinforcing your restaurant’s ambiance, research confirms good menu design and thoughtful content matter to the bottom line and to delivering a winning brand experience. Take a look at your menus. Do they reflect the atmosphere of your restaurant or are they non-descript cardboard printed in Times New Roman font. More upscale restaurant concepts usually use simple, minimal menus while a cozy Italian trattoria might have menus written on chalkboards. Check your menus regularly to make sure that they are clean and stain-free (see cleanliness tip #3).

10. Dishes, silverware and linens – The dishes, silverware, serving pieces and linens you choose should add to your ambiance. Using non-descript clunky white plates and polyester napkins will make the atmosphere bland. Think about what types of plates and glasses would support your concept and add something different to the dining experience. For example, pottery from a local artisan would work well with a farm-to-table concept. Brightly coloured plates and cups for a children’s restaurant. One of a kind, mix and match plates and silverware could work in a local coffee shop.

11. Furniture – How do the tables and chairs support the atmosphere? Think about the think materials, colours, textures, shapes and scale of items and elements. Also consider where furniture is placed in the dining room.

12. Sound – This is a big part of creating ambiance and atmosphere. Sit in your dining room during different times of day. Pay attention to the noise level and what you hear. Do you hear yelling and banging in the kitchen, waitstaff gossiping, conversations at different tables, rowdiness from the bar area? Consider your restaurant concept and what sounds go along with it (loud, exciting, quiet). Working on the acoustics at your restaurant can be as simple as grouping tables or putting up some kind of divider in a room.

What kind of music or entertainment will you have to create an atmosphere that reflects your concept. You can select one or many of the following live music, piped in music, DJ, big screen films, music videos, scenery, juke box, or personalised music delivered at the tables. The volume at which you play your music is critical in supporting the ambiance you desire. Loud music for a hip, lively restaurant versus soft music played at a very low volume for a quiet, romantic place. Finally, think about where you hear the music and entertainment in the entrance, the main room, private areas, the restrooms, the bar, the parking lot.

Creating ambiance and atmosphere at your restaurant doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Making small on-brand changes can improve the vibe by leaps and bounds.