When planning a restaurant, it’s crucial to think about what kind of environment you want to encourage. Every place is different, but if you’re aiming for a family-friendly restaurant, you’ll need to plan ahead. That single fact will affect how you decorate, what you serve, how you market; even what music you play.
So, how do you create a family-friendly restaurant environment?
Introduction to Family-Friendly Restaurant Concepts
Family-friendly restaurants all have a few common themes: they’re generally built and planned to accommodate children and, importantly, a lot of them.
The Importance of a Family-Friendly Environment
Family-friendly restaurants are incredibly important to a healthy dining experience in just about every city and town the world over. Just as many people don’t want to dine around kids, there are countless parents in your area that need a third place for their family. By providing a safe space for families to gather, you encourage a sense of community and, importantly, get to feed hungry families.
Benefits of Catering to Families
There are several benefits to catering to families in restaurants. First and foremost, families are more likely to spend more per visit, after all, they have more people.
Importantly, though, it can give you an opportunity to host events or catering! Whether this involves renting out separate rooms or parts of your business or hosting birthdays, catering to families can be a great way to add an additional revenue stream to your business.
Designing a Family-Friendly Space
The layout and “vibe” of your restaurant is crucial when creating a family-friendly restaurant. Some joints take this to the extreme (I’m looking at you, unspecified animatronic mouse-run arcade and pizza joint), while others take a more delicate approach. While how you tackle your restaurant’s vibes is up to you, it’s important to go in aware of what that means.
Layout and Seating Arrangements
When planning to be a family-friendly restaurant, you’ll need to account for a larger number of people at any given time. You’re likely to be seating groups of three to five for the most part, meaning you’ll need larger tables, more chairs, and more space to accommodate them.
Additionally, it’s important to account for high chairs. You’ll likely need to be able to place them at every table, so you need to arrange your seating to account for that. Finally, it’s important to remember that in any business with children, you’ll need to be prepared for them to run around. Space your tables more than you might normally, clearly block important pathways and entrances, and get on to decorating.
Creating a Welcoming Atmosphere
Creating a family-friendly restaurant atmosphere involves three main points:
Music
- You should have playlists of non-explicit, kid-friendly music queued at all times.
Decorations
- Everything in your restaurant should be appealing to both kids and parents. Some places tackle this with board or arcade games, while others create a fun environment with their wall decorations and table setting; ultimately, that’s up to you.
Activities
- Waiting in a (likely loud) restaurant can be a lot, especially for younger kids. The age-old practices of crayons and coloring pages, games, and sports on the TV are a surefire way to entertain both the kids and parents; it’s a win-win.
Menu Planning for Families
Planning a menu for families is different from planning for mostly adults. You’ll need to account for dietary restrictions, picky eaters, and more — so let’s talk about how.
Kid-Friendly Menu Options
Kid-friendly menu options tend to revolve around three things:
Speed
- When feeding children, it’s best to be able to quickly fire food. You’ll likely want to rest it a bit longer than you would for an adult, so a quick pickup time allows you to let it cool in time to send with the parents’ food.
Simplicity
- Kids don’t care about what seasonal mushroom you used, and they certainly don’t care about your fancy gels and pan sauces — they want dino nuggets and fries, and maybe some fruit and apple juice. Don’t get carried away when planning kids’ menus!
Portion control
- Kids menus generally charge less than their adult counterparts. As such, be sure to plan for smaller portions — generally roughly half the adult serving tends to be perfect.
Allergen and Dietary Considerations
Part of being a family-friendly restaurant is that, ideally, the whole family can eat with you. Because of this, you’ll need to be extremely conscious of building a menu that can accommodate a range of dietary restrictions. Importantly, you’ll also want to be sure that sterilization in the case of allergens like nuts or gluten is realistic in a short period of time given your kitchen’s layout and available space.
Entertainment and Activities for Children
We touched briefly on this before, but there’s so much more that you can do to entertain families.
In-Restaurant Entertainment Options
In-restaurant entertainment can come in a number of forms, but the short and simple truth is that you want easy to understand (and enjoy) entertainment that’s not messy. The tried-and-true method of markers or crayons with a few coloring sheets is great, but it doesn’t really stand out. Options like board or card games can be great, but they can also get out of hand if not monitored.
Some places opt for arcade games or live events, and those are great — but they can also be spendy. Be sure to think about what you can reasonably afford to do regularly before investing.
Special Events and Themed Nights
We’ve covered the idea of restaurant theme nights in another blog, but we didn’t touch on how great they can be for families. Whether you take the idea of a food-themed night or go all out with events, hosting something special that’s tailored to families is an excellent way to encourage new guests (and their families) to come through.
Training Staff for a Family-Friendly Experience
We regularly talk about the importance of training your staff here, and that’s because it’s wildly important to your long-term success.
Customer Service Best Practices
Family-friendly restaurant best practices for customer service are generally pretty similar to any other restaurant, with a few major exceptions. Your staff should be bright, cheery, and able to handle children. While this may seem obvious, it’s important to coach your Front of House on how to handle specific issues.
For example, if (when) children get rowdy, have a standard operating practice (SOP) for how to handle it. Have plans in place for running out of crayons or whatever you chose for entertainment. Establish clear rules for issues with food or picky eaters — you get the idea. What matters is being prepared and, importantly, clear-headed.
Handling Special Requests and Situations
Every restaurant will deal with special requests and needs, it’s normal. What matters is how you handle them, especially when running a family-friendly restaurant. While you certainly shouldn’t bend over backwards to accommodate every special request, small steps make a big difference. Whether that means removing garnish greens for picky eaters, substituting ingredients where possible, or even helping a family celebrate a special day with dessert, every ounce of effort will shine when your guests look back at their visit.
Marketing Your Family-Friendly Restaurant
With that out of the way, it’s time to talk about marketing your restaurant. This is going to vary a bit from the usual approach, as families won’t (usually) be in the same circles as the adults that most restaurants market to.
Leveraging Social Media and Online Presence
As always, I have to mention that building a presence online, especially on social media, is one of the best ways to get more brand recognition. We live in a digital age, and as such, it’s crucial that you post regularly in circles that parents will see. On that note, let’s talk about engaging with your target audience.
Engaging with Local Communities and Schools
Local parents’ groups, schools, and after school activities like sports and clubs are great places to get your name circulating. Whether you tap these communities via catering events, joining social media groups, or good old-fashioned word of mouth, do your best to get your name in the circles that parents will see. This is especially important if you host events, as you can provide an easy meeting point for families and groups, which is the ultimate goal here.
Offering Family Deals and Promotions
Offering a discount for families is a great way to get them in the door. Whether this takes the form of a “family day” with a discount for kids meals, BOGO deals, or “family packs” of food, you should absolutely offer an excuse for families to come to you.
If you take this approach, be sure to talk about it! Get signage up in-house, post on social media, and reach out to any community groups that you can.
Gathering and Implementing Feedback
Encouraging Customer Reviews and Suggestions
Many family-friendly restaurants encourage customer reviews with discounts for taking a survey; it’s quick, easy, and offers a good incentive for busy parents to take the time. This is an excellent way to gather feedback and, when paired with your usual reviews, can help give a glimpse into how guests viewed their experience.
Keep in mind, though, that not everyone will feel the same about the same experience. Some people may find that the noise of, say, singing happy birthday is irritating; on the flip side, the kid whose birthday it is likely loved it. In other words, take feedback, but do it with a grain of salt.
Continuously Improving the Family Experience
While it’s easier said than done, improving the family experience is a major part of every family-friendly restaurant. You’ll need to take those steps on your own, but know that the first will always be knowing that you can do better. Take feedback, learn from your mistakes, and move on stronger and better.
Running a family-friendly restaurant certainly isn’t for the meek, but it can be incredibly rewarding when done right. So, build your playlists, assemble the crayons, and start printing Bluey coloring sheets — we’ve got work to do.
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