In this video, I'll show you how to size a restaurant/bar for occupancy, and later, I'll
show you how to apply this information to nearly any restaurant/bar.
Coming up!
Hey, Rick Uzubell again from Bar Designers, where I share my ideas and tips on bar design,
draft beer system design and product reviews.
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When you look at prospective commercial buildings, do they appear abstract?
If you're in the market for a restaurant/bar and don't know how to select the a prospective
building to match a given occupancy, you've come to the right place!
From a previous video, let's again use this 4,700 sq.ft. restaurant/sports bar, which
we determined to have an occupancy load of 157, as calculated by the guidelines stipulated
in the International Building Code (known as IBC).
Although IBC introduced revisions in 2018 for fire areas in excess of 1,500 sq.ft. for
A-2 businesses serving alcohol, the method of computing occupant loads stated herein
in still current.
When planning buildings for prospective restaurant/bars, the fact most hospitality experts agree
on is that the back-of-the-house generally accounts for 30 – 40% of the total building area.
This means that 60 – 70% of the area is dedicated to front-of-the-house, which is
the area intended for customers.
The 10% variance is normally the result of the complexity of the menu.
Sports bars tend to require less kitchen space, whereas fine dining requires more.
Now let's analyze our information.
You'll note in this example that the bar and bar dining areas account for nearly 43% of
the front-of-the-house area as well as 60% of the total occupant load.
Conversely, the non-bar dining accounts for 27% of the front-of-the-house area and 40%
of the occupant load.
The remaining front-of-the-house space of 30% is dedicated to common areas.What if you’re
planning a new restaurant/bar with an occupancy load of 100 – how large would your building
need to be?
The above information will serve as a good template for establishing an approximate building
size, but given the variation of kitchen sizes, let’s first focus on how the front-of-the-house
space can be predicted.
If the above 3,236 sq.ft. front-of-the-house space yields an occupancy of 157, we could
predict that an occupancy of 100 could be calculated as follows: 3,236 sq.ft./157 occupants
yields 20.6 sq.ft./occupant.
So, for 100 occupants @ 20.6 sq.ft./occupant, we have a total front-of-the-house space of
2,060 sq.ft.
Then the size of the overall facility can be calculated as follows: 2,060 sq.ft./.7
= 2,944 sq.ft. overall.
That's the total facility needed, and that yields a back-of-the-house
space of the difference between the total and the front-of-the-house, which is 884 sq.ft.
In round numbers, in other words, the building would need to be approximately 3,000 sq.ft.
The next decision will be the breakdown of the dining seating.
In our example, about 1/3 of the overall capacity is dedicated to dining seating and 2/3 to
the bar area.
This model is built on the success of the bar and that makes a lot of sense, because
the activity of the dining patrons tends to taper-off several hours before closing.
Secondly, the dining room is more family-friendly and therefore we want to earmark enough capacity.
A restaurant/bar with an occupancy of 100 should probably have 40% of its capacity dedicated
to dining tables; ten booths would be a fine, solid approach.
The remaining 60 patrons could be split between the island bar and adjacent 4-top tables and/or
booths.
The building code is constantly evolving.
According to my good friend, architect Tom Kuhn of CSK Architects, as of 2018, IBC now
requires businesses in Occupancy A-2 that serve alcohol, any new or existing modified
fire area over 1500 sq.ft. would be required to have sprinklers, if you want to meet
current code without implementing work-around design parameters in Chapter 34.
Always consult your local architect.
I want to thank our good friends at Bullpen Luxury Sports Bar and Gelsosomo’s Pizza
for their courtesy.
A great place to hang-out, have pizza and watch the game.
Restaurants with bars don’t require large waiting areas, as many patrons enjoy waiting
at the bar.
See you next time!