Noise Reduction for Your Restaurant
You and your family patronize a neighboring restaurant. The evening starts out nice and quiet but then grows increasingly noisy as more come and go. Between the cooks, wait staff thronging from table to table, and the competing conversations, you realize that the nice night out with your family has been hijacked by excessive noise. You grow disgruntled and swear to yourself that nothing like that ever happens inside your own restaurant. But does your assertion ring true?
Unfortunately, and most certainly at no fault of your own, restaurant owners can get caught up in juggling multiple tasks at once causing the guest experience to mistakenly become an afterthought.
How do you fix this problem? Loud noises can be annoying at best and impede conversation at worst. While it’s hard to eliminate noise altogether, employing noise reduction techniques can improve the guest experience and keep your customers coming back.
Tips for Reducing Noise
- Hard Surfaces vs Soft Surfaces: Hard surfaces, such as tile and wood floors, don’t absorb sound very well. Instead, they reflect it. Soft surfaces, such as medium to high-pile carpet, absorb sound to create a more serene environment for guests. It’s recommended that you design your restaurant with noise reduction in mind. If you cannot, consider putting carpet in heavy traffic areas or waiting room to reduce decibel levels. Drapes by windows and cloth hung by ceilings can also help with noise reduction.
- Location of Equipment: Some of your prized equipment, like your ice machine, comes with a noisy compressor that constantly turns on and off. Positioning these items in the back, away from the main dining room can help in reducing unnecessary noise. Closing doors, turning off fans closest to the serving area and refraining from using the noisy dishwasher during high traffic meal times are all great ways of keeping noise levels down.
- Restructuring Your Space: If you have the funds to do some remodeling, consider creating more rooms with spacious seating and/or install booths with cloth material that absorbs sound.
While noise can sometimes be unavoidable, it’s important to keep these noise reduction tips in mind because they do impact your bottom line. To discuss these tips or explore some insurance needs for your restaurant, give Brian Kilcoyne at H&K Insurance a call at 617-612-6515 or email him at briankilcoyne@hkinsurance.com.
Brian Kilcoyne marries restaurant owners with custom policies all throughout the Greater Boston Area. He prides himself in protecting your assets just as much as he takes pride in watching his son do battle on the wrestling mat and skiing with his family. No matter if he’s in front of a client or atop a mountain, Brian puts forth his best effort in everything he does.
