BY CLAY BUSH

When starting a new café, having the chance to fit it out from scratch can be a blessing, but a misguided floorplan can make or break your café. Therefore, designing a good floor plan is paramount. 

Because your floorplan is a reflection of your individual space and business plan, writing a blog about specifics is not possible. However, we can still highlight some principles that any new café can benefit from.

Your floor plan has one goal, good process. This good process has two flow-on effects, 

1. Ease of service

2. Efficient use of wages

Doing a proper layout is paramount, and can be the difference between profit and loss. In our industry, many people fall at this first step. And will continue to meander through their business life and not see the money sliding through the cracks. You could be forgiven for thinking that this is not common, but I see bad design and systems in 50% of cafes. So it’s a very real problem.  

The biggest problem I see is people putting the focus on one area of the café instead of the whole. For instance, Baristas or roasters who only understand coffee, design coffee bars as a prominent concept in the space. A chef will prioritize the kitchen, and a barman the bar. When in reality, a coffee bar or kitchen should be designed with the context of the whole cafe in mind. 

It is of no benefit for a barista to plough their efforts into their art of coffee to the point they forgo the reason they are there. To make money for the owner. If the owner doesn’t make money, the barista doesn’t get paid.

Where to start?  First and foremost, the macro view. 

The first thought of how to plan your café stats with splitting it between the back of house and front of house.  A general rule is 1/3 of your floor plan should be allocated to the back of house, and 2/3 allocated to the front of house. 

Front of house

Front of house is the term we use to describe anywhere a customer can be served. This includes all indoor and outdoor seating an/ or bar area. 

Back of house 

Back of house is an area that supports front-of-house service. It includes

• Toilets

• Kitchens

• Coffee and beverage bar

• Staffroom

• Offices

If the floor space is not allocated right from the outset, the profitability of your café can be doomed from the start. But how can you know if the mix is right? 

Revisit Staff Costs

You would have already done preliminary staff cost in your initial budgets, however, this is where the rubber meets the road. Your café layout will reaffirm or blow out these costs, so now is the time to revisit wage cost. To do this I suggest you split your wage cost into the same classifications as the macro floor plan layout mentioned above. Ie front of house and back of house.

Staff classifications. 

To make this simple, if they serve customers in the front of house floor space, they are front of house staff. This is generally limited to wait staff and managers who work the floor. Back of house staff are kitchen staff and coffee bar/alcohol staff. 

Basically, if you work behind a bar, your back of house, in front of the bar, front of house.

Now before you start swinging a hammer, comes an important consideration. A café will be hard to make profitable if the number of back of house staff members exceed those front of house.

Remember Baristas are back of house staff, like chefs, they prepare for service. If your back of house requires more manpower than front of house, it states that the process of your café is out of balance. Generally, this means your back of house is not productive enough, ie too many chefs, or too many baristas/bar staff.

For example, if you have baristas and chefs total 5 staff, but you only need 4 wait staff to serve tables, then your café is unbalanced, you need to either;

1. Cut back of house staff

2. Fix your process and allocate more tasks to underperforming sections, like combining coffee and alcohol/juice into one section

3. Make more floor space for tables front of house

4. If all fails, change the café concept you have

Make this correction now. Because it will be costly to do later.

Note. This can be hard to conceptualize, so a neat trick is once you get your space. Use chalk to mark out all space. Into the kitchen, coffee bar, and placement of tables. This way you can physically walk around in your café space and check for bottlenecks before you start construction. It can also be a useful exercise even before you have signed the lease on your new space. Obtain the drawings from the real estate, head to your local carpark after hours with some monster chalk, and draw out your café on the cement.  

Note; just a few important tips on plumbing,

1. Generally (but not always) kitchens, bar, and toilets are near each area so as they can share plumbing requirements. 

2. It is important to determine the location of your property’s water inlet from the street. After doing so, try to put the coffee bar water inlet feed closest to the property water inlet. In this way, the coffee bar will be “upstream” of other appliances that need water in the cafe, and have priority over water. The more appliances that share the same waterline, the more the water pressure and/or flow can drop further down the line. If your coffee machine is at the end of the line, this pressure drop can affect the coffee quality dramatically. In worse case scenarios, I have seen the pressure feed in the machine “bounce by up to 3 bar” when the toilet is flushed upstream. It’s a very real problem you need to take seriously.

3. Grease trap should be outside if at all possible. They smell really bad when getting emptied and can affect the smell of your café for the rest of the day after being emptied.

Coffee bar design and layout

Coffee bar location and process decisions come down to if there is a takeaway window in your café or not. Takeaway windows help to keep customers on the street. A great benefit in easing congestion of your cafe. If you presume to have a large takeaway customer base this would be a good consideration. A large takeaway trade I would see as 60% of your total coffee turnover being takeaway and greater than 30kg of takeaway coffee only. If you do have a large takeaway base but circumstances won’t allow for a window, then try to keep the coffee bar away from the door, so customers waiting for coffees don’t block the flow of your café. 

The disadvantage of a coffee window is that a staff member must always be attentive to the window. So make sure demand allows or this staff member, or your takeaway window may end up costing you money. At the very least give them two jobs like manning the till as well. 

Staff transit time

Cafes, especially large ones, lose a lot of time in the transit of staff. Meaning the bigger the floor plan, the bigger the cost for staff. Not only in staff numbers but in time it takes to cover distances. So if your staff, have to cover great distances, you will need more of them which costs more money. So if you have the opportunity, try to set the coffee bar close to the kitchen and or till. This allows for the staff to save time whilst running coffees and or food together.

Furthermore, if you have a large space, placing the coffee bar in the center of your floor space can help again to minimize travel time. In quiet times it also offers the opportunity to have the barista serve on the floor whilst still maintaining close contact with the bar. 

The Micro View

After you have organized the macro view of your café, most of your problems will already be solved. Your next step is to analyze the micro process. Micro means the smaller running of departments within the context of the whole. There are many of these small microcosms within the café, including the kitchen, dish areas, outdoor seating, coffee bar, etc. It is not only important to make these areas productive in their own right, but also ensure they work in conjunction with other areas. To illustrate an example we will look at the finer points of running a coffee bar.

Micro View, The Coffee Bar Setup

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. This is true also for coffee bar setups. It must either flow from right to left or left to right. Never does the bar turn on itself. 

For example, assuming left to right bar design would be (when standing behind the bar). The order would come in on the left, and exit on the right. This process begins with the Till on the left, then moves through to the docket printer, grinders, coffee machine, milk station/jug rinser, and finally finishing at the coffee pass on the furthest right. If you set the bar in this way, it becomes a natural process. For one person from start to finish, whilst simultaneously allowing the bar to grow with staff when it gets busier. 

The biggest mistake I see in coffee bars is that the till gets put next to the milk station. Ie at the end of the line not at the start. This would be an example of a coffee bar “turning on itself”. When the order is taken you have to go to the grinder at the other end of the bar then come back to the pass. This causes the barista to take too many steps. Steps are time wasted, which translates to less coffee made and less money made. Not only that but it will also cause conflict when there are 2 in the bar. There are instances where this horseshoe process can work. But always consider the straight-line approach as your first option. Whilst this seems obvious, you would be surprised to see how many times, the till is on the wrong side. 

When it comes to your Kitchen ask the chef to help you design it. Just make sure you don’t give him/her too much space. Chefs always want the world. ;-)

Process expansion

A good process allows the system to grow without any adverse effects on the inherent systems.

Let’s stick with our coffee bar to explain.  

With one barista on the bar, the process is:

• Take the money/order

• Print the docket

• Rack the shot

• Pour the milk 

• Put the docket with the completed coffee on the pass. 

• Run the coffee, spike the docket. 

Not only is this station set for a single person, but easily adapts to a two or three-person bar. 

A two-person bar will have one on shots and one on milk exclusively. When there are two people in the bar, there always has to be one in charge. In the case of the coffee bar, the milk barista always calls the shots. Why? The key to efficiency in any process is to support the slowest part of the process. Milk is always slower than shots. (If it’s not you have a big problem.) So put your fastest staff member on milk because they set the pace of the bar. The milk barista is also in charge of controlling the coffee pass as it is near the milk station. So they will also be problem-solving. So make sure they have this ability to solve problems fast, or don’t put them on milk.

With two in the bar, the second barista does till and shots. (because they’re next to one another) and hopefully froths alternate milks. For the bar to run at its maximum pace, the shot barista must know what the milk barista needs before they call for it. Never should the milk barista be waiting for shots.

A three-person bar would be one on till, one on shots, and one on milk.  

I have highlighted the coffee bar process here as an example to correct bar setup. However, it can be applied across other departments in your café. For instance, Your head chef works the food pass, because they are the strongest in that department. Your best waiter/waitress always works the section closest to the door, so they can also direct traffic and flow in the café. This is seeing the departmental micro view, in the context of the cafe’s entire process. 

Ordering systems

Automation in cafes has changed drastically in the last 20 years. Whilst handheld computer units can be great for an outside deck. Generally, fixed computer terminals are the best bet. Place these strategically throughout the café. For a few reasons. 

1. To save the walking time of staff. 

2. Spread your staff so that they have a presence over the entire space, and don’t waste time waiting for a terminal to use.

The only instance where I don’t like computers is as a replacement for docket systems in kitchens and coffee bars. I still believe in using a printer that prints paper dockets. They are easier to use and keep a printed record that can move where the product moves. Or be used in hindsight to problem solve.    

In closing

Planning your café is the most important step in your process. It can be a daunting process until you start with first the macro view of the process, then narrow it down to the micro departmental process. It may take some time and guidance if it’s your first café. But I assure you this could save you tens of thousands of dollars over the life of the café. 

Happy Planning!