Restaurant Design: Crafting Unique Culinary Experiences With David Shove-Brown (Ep 226)
Restaurant design is more than just aesthetics. It’s about crafting a memorable and immersive experience. Join Jaime Oikle and //3877 co-founder David Shove-Brown as they explore restaurant design, highlighting how to create unique dining experiences that blend architecture, branding, and hospitality. David talks about the evolution of his firm, the significance of understanding client visions, and the role of thoughtful design in enhancing both guest and staff interactions. From conceptualizing the perfect atmosphere to ensuring functionality and aesthetics, David explores the key elements that make a restaurant truly memorable. Tune in for a deep dive into the art and science of restaurant design!
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Restaurant Design: Crafting Unique Culinary Experiences With David Shove-Brown
I've got a great episode for you with David Shove-Brown, Co-founder and Principal at 3877, a design and architectural firm that also does some brand development, and does a lot of work for restaurants and hospitality. It’s not a subject that we get into a lot. I'm excited to cover it. It's been a while since we've talked about it here. David, welcome. Tell me a bit about the firm, the work you do, and how you got to where you are today.
Thank you so much for having me. This is awesome. We are a thirteen-year-old firm. My business partner and I started in my kitchen a while back. My business partner is my best friend from college also named Dave. I'm not talking in the third person. He goes by DT, I go by DSB. We had always talked about starting something up, and it just got to be the right time to have contacts and some potential work.
We've grown. We are now a 42-person firm. We do architecture, interior design, and branding. We focus on restaurants, hotels, hospitality, some retail, residential, things of that sort, but there's so much crossover these days that all these sectors are starting to blur together. We wanted to focus on what we were good at and what we enjoyed doing. That's the type of work that we chase.
Let me dig in a little further just by grabbing a quote right off the front of your website, “Authentic spaces for clients who want to do cool shit,” with part of shit blurred out.” Is that the vibe? Is that part of it? Just really having fun with it...
Part of our journey or part of our firm's journey has been coming to the understanding of who we are and celebrating that. Understanding that selecting a design firm is a personal thing. That design firm that's going to work with you and manifest your vision for your restaurant or your hotel. We came to an understanding sort of early on that it's okay not to be the firm for everybody.
It's okay that you're trying to find the right partnerships and the right relationships. We've sort of taken on this mentality of doing cool shit in that, somebody that goes to the website and sees pursing on the website goes, I don't know if this is for me, that's okay. That's part of it or you get people that get onto the website and go, “This is exactly what I want to be a part of. I want to work there. I want to work with these crazy people. That's okay.” We want to have unique people who work here and have different skills, abilities, talents, and visions.
It's okay not being the firm for everybody. It's okay that you're trying to find the right partnerships and the right relationships.
By celebrating who we are and putting it out there, we think that that just makes for a stronger partnership. A while back, one of our employees mentioned that when I called her to offer her a job, she said, I told her that she was our kind of weird and she was like, “I knew at that moment that this was the right place for me.” For us, it's accepting the fact that a lot of us were a little bit like social outcasts in middle school and high school. That's okay. Celebrating who we are and what we do. We want it to be unique and fun and challenging and all of those things together.
Those tough middle school years I got my youngest is in that phase now. We'll see if we get to the other side. Our older ones made it...
When there's high school, so I feel your pain, brother.
Client Vision & Development
I saw elsewhere that people are a big focus in building your team. I do want to come back to that. Let's talk about a restaurant that comes to you. They say, “Listen, I see you guys have done a lot of great projects. I have an idea.” Like how does it build? How do you go from there? How do you help them get their vision?”
That answer has evolved over 13 years. It's evolved to a series of additional follow-up questions to really sort of dig deeper into who that is. There are plenty of folks that are out there in the restaurant space who say, “I inherited some money from my great uncle and I like food, I'm going to open a restaurant.” That's not who we want to work with. We want to work with folks that have a vision of what food is. What beverage service is like? What their journey is like? What the concept of the menu is like?
As soon as we meet with somebody, we're going to start to drill down into the business and talk about the food and talk about what that experience is like, not just from, is it a white napkin experience? Is it a grab-and-go? We're going to talk about all the way from who's taking the order to bringing the food to how many covers are we talking about. What are we talking about in terms of the bar experiences versus the dining experience and all of those things?
It leads us to a whole bunch of questions to dive deeper into who this is and what they're trying to do because quite frankly, the design is just part of that experience. We are not the experience. The food is the experience. That night out is the experience and good design helps tell the story and helps reinforce the vision of what's happening as much as good branding and good well thought out menus, well thought out place setting. All of those things work together to provide an experience.
We fully understand that while the design is important and special, it's not the leading star. I say we choose and celebrate working with all those other things to provide someone with a really unique dining experience whether that is, like I said, a quick grab-and-go burger or this is a three-hour long meal that's got seven courses, whatever that may be, we want to work with them to provide the best night out possible.
Design Elements
There are so many invisible components of design that folks don't even realize. The lighting comes together and the music and the materials. It's stuff that I don't even necessarily think about or the normal person thinks about - we just feel it. What are some of those behind-the-scenes things that you start to rattle off? Talk to me about some of those decision processes and the things that go into it.
There are a ton of decisions, some of which are easy. It's easy to start to talk about. I say easy as in it's straightforward. We're picking wall finishes or we're picking floor finishes, but some of it is the understanding that we want to provide the right lighting in a restroom. When somebody goes in to use the restroom and they wash their hands at the sink afterward, they look in the mirror and go, “I look good,” versus terrible lighting that you walk in and go, “I don't want to be a part of this.”
Starting to think of the customer experience in terms of what are some of the high-touch areas that are obviously very important, but what are some of those areas that are sometimes forgotten? What are some of those little nuances that the development of purse hooks, for instance, things like that, that when you don't have little things like that, people go, “What a bummer.” When you have them, it's thought out. It's something that really just adds to the experience and makes people feel a little bit more comfortable, a little bit more at home. Also, that same thought process goes for employees. Understanding circulation patterns of employees. How is somebody serving a table and clearing a table and dropping dirty dishes off and picking up plated food to be delivered? What's that cycle like?
What are the distances at the bar, in the back bar so that you maintain efficiency, but also provide the right environment for bartenders to interact with guests and provide that next level of experience that says, because you're not walking all over God's great earth to get a bottle of wine. That gives you a little bit extra time to go, “I noticed you tried this, how about this one the next time?” It's really diving into that customer and employee experience of working there and helping that lead some of the discussion.
When you were talking, one of the things I thought about was the first impressions focal point. Any trends or anything you guys like to do specifically to capture interest or does a good design have maybe multiple focal points that different people are going to catch on to? What do you think?
For us, it's a multi-focal point approach. All those points play into one experience. I think that when somebody goes out to dinner and you go to a restaurant that has a focal point, you go, you have dinner and you go, “That's great. Check, I did it. I can go to the next restaurant.” If you provide differing seating areas, differing activity and environments, and differing levels of engagement, you could go to a restaurant with a buddy, you go to a restaurant on a date, you could go to a restaurant with a group of friends, and each time could be a different experience.
When we start to talk about the experience of a restaurant, we look at all those things because we want somebody to go in and go, “I had this great dinner sitting at this booth, I really want to go to the bar next time I'm here, or I really want to go to the upstairs dining room or whatever it may be.” You want to give peaks to some of these other things so that people keep coming back and want to come and experience all those different places and pieces.
Trends
I want to go next to trends. Are you seeing trends in the marketplace with operators saying, “I've got to have this." What are your thoughts on trends?
We do work all over the country. We've got projects going on anywhere from the DC area to the Midwest, to the West Coast, Hawaii, and the Caribbean right now. There are certainly some thought processes that are the same across sectors, but certainly talking about trends, we went through a period of time where there was sort of a hyper-local trend, there was the farm-to-table trend. I'm not trying to diminish that Farm to Table suggests that it's just a trend and a fad. I'm suggesting that the manner in which you present your restaurant has evolved and changed.
I think what we're seeing now was really very evident right after COVID was understanding that people have a lot of choices, understanding that there are a lot of great restaurants out there. There's a lot of great dining experiences. How does your dining experience give people the bang for their buck, but also make it so that they want to talk about it and come back for more? For a long period of time, or maybe longer than I even want to think about there was this commentary of the Instagramable moment.
Really what it's about is understanding social media as a tool, as a way to share imagery and share experiences. Quite frankly, those are some of the yes, restaurant reviews are important and restaurant write-ups are important but truly people having great experiences and talking about it with their friends or talking on their social media platforms, or quite frankly, talking about it with strangers on Yelp and things like that. That's where some of the best business comes from.
By providing experiences and atmospheres that allow for people to really want to participate, not to have like that one, I'm looking at probably our logo here, but that one feature wall that everybody wants to stand in front of and take a photo, but giving people multiple experiences like do that selfie with that cool tile in the bathroom. Also, take a picture of that beautifully plated dish and what's happening at the bar. All of those things can help promote the restaurant just from guests alone. Having well-trained staff, having a well-thought-out circulation, all of those things play into a great experience that people then talk about.
Project Challenges
What I'm curious about as you're talking is that projects never work right. Whether it's your house or your restaurant, things just don't work out. What are some of the pain points that you see restaurants go through, “We wanted to do this, but we had to pivot into that.” What can people think about ahead of time to not make mistakes? Does anything jump to your head?
A couple of them. Understanding what makes them money. Understanding the balance of what their vision is between food and drink. Understanding are we a bar-heavy restaurant? Are we a food-heavy restaurant? Is there a balance? Understanding how many covers a restaurant needs to have in a given night because that's going to inform the type of service and how the service operates. Understanding the production of the food, how it needs to be produced, and how it needs to be brought out to guests.
Generally, you can walk into a restaurant space that has not succeeded, and you can tell almost immediately if it's a chef-driven restaurant or an ownership-driven restaurant because the percentages of seating versus kitchen are not right. There's a pretty strong balance there to make money. Then quite honestly, circulation. A lot of times people say, “Kitchens are back of the house, and so are restrooms, we should just make one corridor at the back of the house,” which is a complete colossal disaster.
When you have people who are looking for the restroom interacting with people bringing plates of food out, it cannot succeed. Understanding how some of those things operate. Understanding just simple protocols of movement around a restaurant. Understanding the business aspect before you even get into it. Then understand quite honestly how the entire budget plays into the long-term success of the restaurant right now.
We're still in a time when mechanical equipment and electrical, everything is expensive. You're going to spend so much money in infrastructure before you even get to the pretty stuff that's going to be the vision of your restaurant, that you could be spending your entire lifespan of the restaurant trying to just catch up on the amount you spent on putting in mechanical equipment. Understanding your budget and understanding where it's going is critical.
Understanding your budget and where it's going is critical.
David’s Career Journey
You talked about a lot of choices in restaurants absolutely, but I want to flip it on you. There are a lot of choices in careers. How did you end up in this realm?
My story is a little bit more interesting in the sense that I don't know. I didn't grow up with anybody in the family who was an architect or anybody who was in architecture design. My getting here was a little bit circuitous, but I finally made it to architecture school and really found all of the weird people like me who were creative, math-based, and science. I got into college and I was working for a couple of different firms. I was in academia for a while working with young people.
It was great to be inspired by young creative ideas. It’s also a great way to find awesome talent and then offer them jobs. We have a bunch of people that work here. When I went from full-time teaching to part-time, we had a bunch of people here who were students from a past life. As we got into it and we started to discuss more of the types of work, and this goes back to the do cool shit of, I just want to work with people that I like. You said something earlier that sometimes things just go wrong. It's going to happen in every project.
We never have a perfect project. We have made a conscious decision that we want to work with people that understand that there's fallibility in all of this and understand that we might screw something up, somebody else like, “That's okay. We figured it out and we move forward.” We want to work with nice people. I want to work with people and when I'm in town, I want to be at their restaurant or I want to hang out with them and have a beer. That to me is far more important.
We started to find that in the space of hospitality and restaurants and retail. There was just a community there that we really enjoyed and not just a community of clients but quite frankly our competition. We’re very good friends. A lot of times, we’re sharing ideas with our competition or talking to our competition about what's working. Especially during COVID, we had a lot of conversations, “How are we dealing with this? How do we get to work? How do we help each other so that when somebody's a little slower, somebody else can help them out?” There was just that community aspect to our sectors that we really enjoyed too.
Building Teams & Leadership
As we start to wrap, one of the last things I want to get to is your thoughts on recruiting, hiring and leadership. What thoughts can you share on building a team?
Hire talented people and get the hell out of the way. It's more evolving. We've done a good job of finding talented people. I say we as a whole, not just Dave and I, but we as a whole in that the really talented people that we have here talk about working somewhere that might be a little bit different, that could be a little bit more interesting, that could provide some unique atmosphere to produce creative work. They start to recruit colleagues and they start to recruit classmates. There's that word-of-mouth component. That's great.
We have a pretty sort of rigorous interview process where folks start talking to our HR team and then they are meeting with some other people in the office. They meet with Dave, myself, and our newest partner, Ryan. We want to make sure culturally that people fit in and understand what they're sort of getting into. We want to tour them around the office and show them that we have graffiti up on the walls and a sign that says do cool shit every day. Again, we want people to feel comfortable here.
I want people to be individuals and unique but bring a sense of camaraderie to their team. It's not 42 individuals working in 42 directions, but bringing those unique, weird, fun people together for a common goal. That comes from communication. We've worked really hard at building our mentoring within the office and trying to get people to see long-term. Those are all things that we're continuing to evolve and continue to grow. Giving people a voice, giving people a place where they feel that they can speak up and actually influence change is something that's important to us.
Giving people a voice and a place where they feel they can speak up and influence change is important.
Excellent -- the lessons that you talked about work in any business. Those are successful ways to engage people, motivate people, and build a team. If your people are bringing other people to work at your company, you're doing something right. I fully believe that. David, send them to the website or anywhere you'd like. Where should folks go to learn more?
Start off with the website, go to 3877.design. From there, you can dive into all the social media and find us and me. Each of our social media outlets is a little bit different because what we show on Instagram is different than LinkedIn or different than Facebook. Part of what we do on social media is we talk about the story of the design. Instagram's got a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff and LinkedIn's got more finished product. Go and find us by doing searches for 3877 and studio 3877. You'll find us everywhere. There are links on our website but dive in there. Then feel free to reach out to me at DSB@Studio3877.com - I'm happy to connect.
Folks, go to the site. There are some beautiful projects. You'll see that. Get in touch with them on socials. Instagram is great for behind-the-scenes. LinkedIn is more corporate at times - use your channels appropriately. Good lesson. Folks, David Shove-Brown of 3877. Find them on the web at 3877.design For more great restaurant marketing, service, people, and tech tips, stay tuned to us here at RunningRestuarants.com. In the meantime, do us a favor, share us, like us, review us, rate us, wherever you're listening or watching - that helps us, I appreciate it. We'll see you next time. Thanks, David.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
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