7 Modern Restaurant Exterior Design Ideas

A restaurant’s or venue’s exterior is almost like a movie trailer. It creates interest from potential patrons, gives clues as to what’s inside, and is a visual advertisement for your business. And we all love a good movie trailer!

So it’s super important for your restaurant’s exterior to be at its absolute best. Here are seven modern restaurant exterior design ideas to help make your venue a blockbuster.

1. Be On-Point With Your Brand Carry-Through

Your brand is the heart of your restaurant. In that collection of colors, style of your logo, and how you’ve presented yourself in your advertising, lies the message of what your venue is all about and what experience your guests can expect. Your central design ideas should flow from your brand identity.

You should carry the look and feel of your brand into both your exterior and interior designs (including your outdoor area if you have one) to create a seamless flow. 

If your restaurant theme is on the fancier, more upmarket side for example, you want an exterior that speaks to that. Think elegant architectural layout, classy lighting, spaciousness, and simplicity (so don’t clutter too many elements into your exterior shopfront). 

You also want to incorporate high-quality materials like stone, wood, and metals, elegant signage, and a more neutral color palette (if your brand is bold and bright, use your brighter colors as accents). All of these speak to the tone of your upmarket venue. And then this is carried through into your interior, including your menus, indoor signage, and even your choice of furniture and furnishings.

2. Know Exactly Who Your Customers Are

It’s marketing 101 to know exactly who your customers are:

• Their demographics, including age and gender – different types of look-and-feel may appeal to different generations
• Family status (Will kids be decision-makers in whether a family walks into your venue?)
• Geographic location

If your restaurant is made for walk-ins and impulse visits, and is close to a bus or train station, university, or office block, you’ll want that exterior to really pop.

You’ll need to go bold, be eye-catching and unique, and really stand out from the crowd. Because yes, your competitors will also be eyeing your potential patrons, so you want your establishment to rise above the noise and catch those proverbial fish. 

If your patrons are the type that book in advance and generally drive through to sit and enjoy a meal over an hour or two, you need to consider things like parking and drop-off areas (if they’re taking taxis). 

This means that your design theme has to extend to these areas as well. And don’t forget the walk from the parking lot to your entrance. A successful venue makes sure that every part of the customer journey (including the walk to the entrance) feeds into the overall design theme.

Wondering how to streamline everything from seating arrangements to event management? Perfect Venue’s software simplifies the entire process for you. It’s the go-to solution for busy restaurant and venue managers who need everything running smoothly behind the scenes.

3. Welcoming Entrance

Now that we’ve got them to the door, let’s take a look at the entrance. Firstly, it must be welcoming. Good lighting, awnings, canopies, and upright plants all lean towards a strong first impression on your patrons. 

Another modern restaurant exterior design hack is to use different colored tiles on your pavement, or a really cool entrance mat and flashy awnings. Unexpected design elements like these immediately catch the eye, and for a hungry diner whose stomach is growling at them, are a great drawcard to get their feet through the door.

Also, if a diner is ambling around trying to decide on a restaurant to stop at, these visual cues can be the deciding factor.

If your venue’s serving style includes having tables positioned near the entrance, be careful that they don’t clutter it or make existing visitors feel like they have incomers brushing past them and invading their space. One always expects a certain amount of privacy when enjoying a meal, and you don’t want to dampen the experience of diners who have already chosen your venue to feel uncomfortable.

4. Attractive Signage and Menu Display

You may think that your restaurant name and logo above the door is enough, maybe with a hastily written chalkboard showing the day’s specials plonked out front. But it’s not. Attractive signage speaks volumes about your restaurant or venue, giving impressions of what visitors can expect from the dining experience. 

The same goes for any menu displays you are using in your restaurant exterior, whether it’s a beautifully printed decal on your glass shopfront or that chalkboard put out with the daily specials. 

Signage and menu displays are created to give clarity on the restaurant’s offerings and have an impact on your potential patrons. They need to be clear and well-designed, reflect your brand identity, and be visually compelling. You don’t want to end up being the wallflower while your competitors sweep up all the customers!

Modern restaurants also often incorporate technology in their signage and menu displays. They use illuminated digital boards that can really titillate the diner, showing well-photographed dishes or even short videos that can trigger desire and emotion in a customer. 

And one often-overlooked element when we’re talking signage and menus, is fonts. You may think that a word is a word is a word, right? Wrong. Believe it or not, your font type and style also gives a ‘feeling’ of what your restaurant is about, what level of service and food it will likely deliver, and what the dining experience will be like. 

5. Install Branded Art and Interesting Features

People are naturally curious beings. When they see something different and intriguing, they are almost magnetically drawn to it to take a closer look. This is where interesting features and cool artwork really come in handy.

If artwork is used outdoors, it will need to be weather-proof, but adding some branded art to your venue’s exterior is a smart trick to communicate more about your restaurant’s personality and what patrons can expect. 

It can be a mural painted on one of the exterior walls, almost like an exterior feature wall, or some artistic, well-designed graffiti that oozes “you know you want to come inside – we’re that awesome”. You could even create an interesting mosaic wall that makes people stop and stare.

Interesting features play the same role. For example, if your venue has more of an industrial vibe, have some exposed beams and pipes on your exterior (intentional, of course, not because of lack of maintenance). Or have some interesting lighting features that illuminate your entrance and herald guests into your restaurant.

6. Use Glass Wisely

Glass can be a beautiful addition to your restaurant exterior. It can add an upmarket, high-end look to your exterior, and give passersby a peek into your interior – including delicious food on the tables of seated guests. Who isn’t tempted by seeing others having a great time, enjoying their food? The FOMO is real!

But be careful with glass. Sometimes, it can be perceived as an indication of a more commercial restaurant like a diner, coffee house, or fast food joint – which is great if your establishment falls into that category. But it’s not so great if you’re a specialty restaurant known for serving the best duck foie gras in town. 

In a case like this, where you want a more upscale vibe, use smaller glass windows – or no windows, if you have good lighting inside or natural light coming in from the back. 

Place your windows strategically so they act as a conduit for natural light to shine indoors, but aren’t right in front of a table. Your resident diners probably won’t be too thrilled having every Tom, Dick, and Harry stop and peer in to see what they’re eating.

7. Keep Your Exterior Well-Maintained

In all cases, it is vital to keep your exterior well-maintained. Walls with flaking paint, wooden doors that are water-damaged, unkempt plants outside the entrance, or dirty glass – these are surefire ways to encourage potential guests to walk away.

A well-maintained exterior is perceived to reflect a well-maintained interior, kitchen, service, and quality of food. It’s the same as seeing a shabbily-dressed person, with scruffy hair, and dirty nails – you assume their house will also be ill-maintained if they don’t care to look after their appearance.

Exterior maintenance is the cornerstone of managing customer perceptions and includes things as simple as sweeping dust and leaves off your pavement daily, and making sure all your lightbulbs work.

Conclusion

Your restaurant exterior is its movie trailer and its billboard – strategically showing what visitors can expect, what food, beverages, and service you offer, and what the experience will be like. Every single element needs to be well thought out and planned, and incorporated with the bigger vision in mind. 

With so much competition around you, your trailer needs to be something really special and outstanding. Then you need to deliver on what’s been promised. That’s the follow-on secret to success. 

Seems like a lot to manage? It’s okay – there are really smart software solutions that can be the backbone of keeping everything on track in your venue, like the one we offer at Perfect Venue. 

Watch our demo and try out the 14-day free trial and see how much stress in managing your venue drops off your shoulders. Then put that extra energy and time into bringing more life and interest into your restaurant exterior.