Talk to any restaurateur and you'll hear the same lament: Patrons are picky — pickier than they've ever been.
So it's no wonder that restaurants are going out of their way to make sure their interiors are visual crowd-pleasers.
"They are absolutely going the extra mile in designing the space," agreed Susan Pitaccio, president of Maxey Hayse Design Studio Inc. in Nutley, N.J., an interior design firm for restaurants and other entertainment and dining venues.
Guests' high expectations of their restaurant experiences have compelled restaurants to boost their visual appeal, she said.
"People today are looking for the total experience," Pitaccio said. "They want good food, fast service and an environment they feel good in. It's the whole package."
A&W, a 665-unit restaurant company based in Vancouver, Canada, has used its interior design to entice customers. The 665-unit restaurant is just completing a $23 million retrofit of its locations. Starting in 2000, the company modified its interiors to recreate the feeling of the chain from the 1960s, drawing on nostalgia for its baby-boomer patrons.
The color scheme was returned to A&W's traditional orange and brown, and accented chrome was incorporated throughout the units. The company also created a "memory wall" with black-and-white pictures. While A&W wanted to add some old-fashioned touches, it didn't want to give the store a diner look, noted Mike Atkinson, director of marketing for the company.
"We wanted to make sure the brand was relevant to today's consumers, but [we wanted to] have some touches reminding them of days gone by," Atkinson said.
The redesign paid off, he said. Restaurants experienced at least a 5-percent increase in sales following the re-imaging.
The company actually now is gearing up for another redesign. The franchisees, which make up the bulk of the company's units, are expected to modernize against the company's design standards every eight years.
"I think consumers expect restaurants to keep their facilities modern and current," Atkinson said. "If you don't refresh facilities every five to eight years, you lose the connection to your customers."
Denver-based Chipotle Mexican Grill, which operates more than 600 units, also has used its design to reinforce the company's brand image.
The restaurant interiors, which have a simple and modern look, underscore Chipotle's concept.
"Our food and menu draw on very basic, simple ingredients: grilled chicken, steak, rice and beans," explained Chris Arnold, spokesman for Chipotle. "But simple ingredients are used in unexpected ways to create something extraordinary.
"It is a similar philosophy in the design of the restaurants — using very basic things in unusual ways to create something extraordinary."
Those basic things include plywood, concrete and corrugated metal, along with other basic building materials.
Another hallmark of Chipotle's restaurant design is the conformity of the restaurant to an existing space. The company has built restaurants in varied environments, including, for example, old, historic city neighborhoods, and the chain has tried to retain the integrity of the existing architecture. For example, a unit on Montague Street in Brooklyn, N.Y., still has the marble floor that existed when a bank formerly occupied the space.
The idea behind leaving spaces intact is that the restaurants then look like a natural extension of their environment, Arnold said.
"There is a green or environmental component to it," he said. "There is also a genuineness. When you pay attention to what is happening around you and build a building that fits there, it has a real or genuine feeling [rather] than the same cookie-cutter restaurant stamped out over and over and over again."
Like major chains, independent restaurants also cannot afford to lag behind on their looks, according to experts.
Major successful chains have forced independent chains to take a closer look at their interiors. Over the last year and a half, Pitaccio said she's noticed that more independents are looking to upgrade their interiors. They also are striving to create a more uniform concept, tying the logo, menu and packaging with interior design.
"Before it was: here is the chain, here is your hometown food," she said. "Now the chains are all over the place, so independents have to compete. The chain has to be one step ahead."
Tiff's Restaurant, a five-unit, family-style restaurant in New Jersey, currently is upgrading two units and designing one from the ground up.
"You need to keep up with the competition," said Michael Romanelli, chief executive of the company. "Everyone's coming in, and you have a major company pulling for the same customer in a 5- to 6-mile radius."
In one of its older units, it will be placing plasma TVs throughout the bar area. The bar area of the restaurants is an important part of the units, Romanelli said.
"I don't want to give us a sports-bar heading, but we do have a number of TVs, so if there are playoffs people will have great food and entertainment," he said. "My attitude is [that] TVs are the least expensive entertainment we can give customers."
As far as branding, certain features are similar from unit to unit, such as sports memorabilia on the walls and black-and-white family pictures. The company also is creating a theme with signs, exteriors and awnings.
But Romanelli is quick to mention that he doesn't want all of his restaurants to look the same.
"Do I want them to be cookie cutter? Absolutely not," he said. "Our customers want great food, great value and great service. Along with that is a clean, comfortable, nice feeling. Whether the dining rooms are the same ... I don't feel our customers care about that."
Even with a fresh redesign, the look of the restaurant is still only a part of the winning formula, he said.
"The food is the most important thing," Romanelli said, adding that he can spend $10 million on the interiors, "but if my food isn't fresh and great and the value isn't there they're not coming back."