Café and Restaurant Redevelopment Design
Café and restaurant redevelopment design is a complex project in which layout plans of different spaces must be coordinated with conditions for normal operation of various kitchen fittings (stoves, ovens, cooker hoods, refrigerators, dishwashers, etc.). The project must be carried out in accordance with hundreds of special rules working in the Russian Federation (sanitary and epidemiological regulations and norms – SanPiN). Naturally, the genesis of these rules took place under the influence of Soviet regulations which had been developed for the Soviet reality (when there was no problem in allocating a separate room for the storage of almost every single product). Modern restaurant owners find it difficult to follow these rules as they try to save on every square centimeter of space they have to pay for. Most often, the design plan of a restaurant is redone and altered several times until the customer tries all possible ways which cannot be done and the design team finds the only way which the customer will be happy with and which can be done.
On the other hand, design plans of cafés and restaurants are often ordered by network companies (in Moscow, any cafeteria strives to become a network) – and, as a rule, they are very experienced customers that know exactly what they need and how to get it. In addition, it is often the case that there are no initial data necessary for the design process. The customer either delay delivering these data following the principle "start cooking, and we’ll get you the ingredients", or simply admits that there are no such data and no hope of getting it. A design planner must be ready to dig up, fish for and get hold of any possible details onsite. In this case, a design planner has to fix arbitrary initial parameters, and if later – in the course of construction works – they do not prove correct, he will have to put it right quickly in accordance with the newly discovered information. Another feature of the process of restaurant and café design is that you have to work on a tight schedule. A design plan must be ready by tomorrow or, better still, by yesterday. This is because it takes a long time to find a suitable place for a restaurant, and when such place is finally found, customers start paying rent for it. Naturally, they need everything to be done "as quickly as possible".
A redevelopment design of a restaurant is made based on the engineering design which is a plan and initial data for all other design documentation and is prepared by an expert – a food engineer – in accordance with the SanPiN. This is the most important and difficult stage. If later something is changed in the technology design, the rest of the documentation will be affected and will have to be revised and altered or even developed from scratch.
APBP Architectural Bureau has prepared and got approvals for design plans of over 50 cafés and restaurants; 29 of them are rather well-known locations in Moscow. Some of them are situated in the shopping centers “Mega”, “Gagarinskiy”, “Zolotoy Vavilon” (literally – golden Babylon), “Yevropeyskiy” (lit. European), “Metropolis”, which have their own additional design requirements (e.g. IKEA rules). So, contact us if you need a redevelopment plan for your café or restaurant. We believe that we have enough experience and we are comfortable to work with.
A significant event took place on September 27, 2019, which will undoubtedly have a great impact on the design and coordination of the redevelopment of restaurants. The federal authorities finally decided to review the restaurant rules and food preparation requirements. Talk about this was a long time. It was clear to everyone that the sanitary and epidemiological requirements for public catering enterprises end the design standards for cafes and restaurants are clearly redundant and largely outdated. It's absolutely clear for all market participants, but the regulatory authorities were completely satisfied with this situation and they enjoyed they almost unlimited power with pleasure. The business, as always, had no voting rights and was silent for years, paid (fines) and obeyed.
And so, everything can change. Outdated and redundant standards will be reviewed. Do you believe? We believe. Cose, what else can we do?
