People > Over design

It’s great to be back writing another article. I took a break for a while as I’ve enjoyed smashing out podcasts, here is a link if you want to jump into those bad boys – click here

As you guys know, I started my own business earlier this year after years of the corporate life. I wanted to create a business that is based on honest conversations, openness and most importantly un wavering-support for my clients. I have the pleasure of working with some amazing Hotel groups, restaurants and even businesses outside of hospitality that want to take a more guest centric approach to their delivery. Happy days!

One of the things that I talk about a lot is this need to over design the shit out of everything at the minute. It’s actually increasing the amount of issues in our industry rather than solving them. Now I’m sure some of you just frowned, and rolled your eyes.. hang in there… you’ll like where I’m going. 

Over the last few years, we have become more focused on design, in particular in lifestyle hotels, restaurants and bars but even now your local Starbucks has got into the game. Design (especially interior design) is like fashion. It evolves, grows and changes and things fall in and out of vogue. It’s important for a business to stay looking sharp and as fresh as possible but it doesn’t always need to be cutting edge. 

If I was to list the most over used design elements I’m sure you can tick these off 

1.    Overuse of Brass and / or Copper 

2.    Heavy industrial themes – Bare wood, exposed pipes, wobbly metal tables 

3.    Everyone is wearing leather / denim aprons

4.    Neon sign telling you ‘life is going to be great’ (if your looking for a sign this shit isn’t it) 

5.    Palm tree wall paper

6.    Furniture that looks great but is like sitting on a bed of nails (last about 2 minutes)

7.    Crockery made to look like its fresh from the potter’s wheel. Mass produced individuality 

8.    For sure cutlery that has square handles so it’s like trying to cut something with a block of wood. 

9.   Food is being served on a wooden block (or slate if you fancy that real retro vibe)

Where we have all fucked up is that we have all been driving this new design led culture and by doing so everything is now starting to look the same… its actually having the opposite effect. Instead of creating a design differentiation that is led by your brand / culture / product / location, it seems okay to rock up with a golden pineapple, a copper cup and a leather apron and boom we are so cool! 

But this isn’t the point of this paper. 

The bigger issue we have is that so much is being invested into design it is having some pretty dramatic knock on effects to the operation / profitability / life of the business. A quick example would be that I had the pleasure of visiting a brand new hotel in Central London. It looked amazing, beautiful guests, beautiful team, lots of copper cups everywhere and brass, buzzing and fantastic. It looked like any other new hotel in the lifestyle market at present. So as I sat down waiting at my table for breakfast, I got offered a drink by the lady serving me. I asked what tea’s they had and her response was ‘Tea Bags’. I later found out she has been there for 2 weeks before opening but they didn’t do any training just unpacking…. What a perfect use of the teams time. Good job. 

Let me run through the top 3 main concerns I have (and you should be having) 

1.     Design over People

Anyone who has done a new opening knows the pain. The delays, let downs, problems and actually the great fun! So much is invested in the design and build, as it’s the asset. Where so many new businesses fuck up is the investment into their biggest operating cost once the doors open and that’s the team. 

I was at a new opening of a restaurant last week here in Edinburgh. Let’s call it ‘Laura’s. Now it was a soft opening, so we were all invited knowing that this was the training week, allowing the team to learn while only charging the guests 50% of the bill. 

The design was amazing, the place looks incredible and I could really see the modern Italian theme they were going for, but once you’ve sat down you can also see where they started to run out of money and time. The finishes were poor, there wasn’t even a toilet roll in the bathrooms just a box of tissues on the floor. It won’t last. However, that wasn’t the problem. They decided to fill the restaurant, a bum on every seat, I’m guessing they needed to start bringing revenue in, even at 50% discount. This isn’t a soft opening this is warfare, and commanding short term gain loses the long term vision. 

I got chatting to the team and it turns out some of them only started 48 hours ago, no training, no structure, no test and learn.. just straight into a full restaurant full of guests.

I had a two-course meal and it took over two and a half hours (soup and pizza). Everyone was stressed out. The team, the chefs, the guests, the manager, the host. The lack of training coupled with greed fucked this opening right up. I caught up with some of the other guests this week who all had a similar experience, and all have said they won’t be back, so sad. 

Killing your business before it really starts because you cut corners in training your team, is masochistic. 

Your guests won’t remember the plate, or the design of the toilet but they will remember the interactions from your team. 

On a positive note, I did enjoy the copper cutlery….. but would have been happy with normal cutlery and the savings spent on the team’s development. 

2.     The building works harder than the team

I have had the pleasure of opening a lot of hotels and restaurants equally I have had a 20-year career running them to! (oh and I’ve eaten in a ton of them too). The one stand out observation as a Manager, Director or Guest, as controversial as it is… the better the design the more chance there is for extreme complacency from the Owners, Leaders and Team. 

Let me explain before you hang up. 

We open a new Bar, its beautifully designed. Think of it as Instagram fodder! 

We open and it’s super busy as the in crowd want to be seen there, every day we just have to open the doors as people want to be seen there. The guests put up with the long waits for drinks, the lack of consistency and the team that are a little aloof (think Soho House team on crack). Then the inevitable happens, another new hot spot opens, the crowd move on, and all we are left with is the few guests that pass through. 

You could argue that it also has the opposite effect with the team, as they are excited about it etc. This ONLY happens when we invest in them, remember your team are (hopefully) human, not zipped up the back. They of course will be excited when we sell them the brand, the vision, our goals, dreams, aspirations… not the fucking copper cutlery, that’s not turning anyone on. 

Suddenly were in the shit. 

Now, if we had invested in more than just the looks of the business we would have had a team that were turbo charged to do a great job, that bought into our brand and our business and also had a vested pride in what we were looking to do. Ego however got in the way. Because of that we didn’t wow the locals with our skills, talent, friendly team and approach. We looked good. 

but we really wanted those copper cocktail shakers.

(Now is time for 2-4-1 offers, discounts, deals, and blaming the location for being shit… nope actually it was us!) 

3.     Disparity between your brand and the design

One of the most important parts of designing a new business and how it looks, feels, acts and talks is the brand that pins all of this together. A brand isn’t just a logo, or a power point presentation, it carves out everything from tone of voice to the pen or pencil we use. 

It all comes together to create this amazing business. 

Now, the worst thing you can do, is use the lens of the brand for the food, drink, uniforms (leather apron?) and recruitment but then when it comes to the design it’s like we just want to satisfy something else, we want a trophy business, we want it to look like this place or that… Ego baby, all ego. No wonder everything is starting to look the same, we are not satisfying a brand that leads us in another direction. We are designing by numbers because we like the mirror we saw in our local Starbucks toilet… stay classy. 

So congratulations, you have a brand in a designed space that makes no sense at all. You might as well open a vegan restaurant and put leather table cloths down. The problem is so many don’t see this, and then wonder why it doesn’t all hang together. 

Scary but true. 

In our industry like so many the importance of differentiating in order to get noticed remains paramount. We have competitive highstreets, competitive hotel chains, Jesus we are spoilt for choice everywhere. 

If you think I’m talking shit, walk down the bread isle in your local supermarket and see how many types, manufactures, versions of white bread there are. If the bread market is that competitive imagine what other industries are going to be like. 

I mentioned at the start of this paper the impacts to your business, they are deep and far ranging. Think of a few together 

1.    High design costs to look like the Starbucks next door

2.    Disparity between brand and design lead to customer confusion and could be loss of trade, as they just don’t get it. 

3.    Sales become more challenging as like everyone, looks fade, team investment doesn’t. So guests stop coming as your just the same as everywhere else just with a poorly trained team, driving loss of sales and cost cutting 

4.    Team turn over, after the initial burst and excitement the team move on as they don’t want to be serving 2-4-1 burgers, they wanted to be part of a super funky amazing cocktail bar. Cost of recruitment is high 

5.    No competitive advantage over your nearest and dearest competition so you lose out, their established.. your not. You’re just another over designed business. 

I could go on and on. 

Stop homogenising your dreams, because you liked a mirror in another bar. Design for your brand, for your people, for your future. If that doesn’t include some exposed pipework, a leather apron and a Copper salt mill then even better. 

Before you think about a new bar in your hotel or a new business venture, take some time to understand what it should be through the lens of your brand, not while sat in the toilet at Starbucks staring at the mirror, please, for me. 

I hope you enjoyed this article, I love all of your feedback as always so hit me up, most of all comment and share to help me spread the word far and wide. Every time you share it brings a little bit of joy to my world! 

P.