Generally, human beings thrive on social encounters. Most of us enjoy interacting with others – this is one of the reasons why we return again and again to the same cafe or pub until it becomes ‘our local’, and we are offered ‘the usual’.
A prerequisite for us enjoying these interactions, however, is that they are positive, pleasant and easy. We instinctively shy away from awkwardness. Britain is world-famous for the quality and rigour of its queuing – and for the huffing and puffing that ensues if anyone jumps the queue. At the heart of this is a sense of fairness, a belief that everyone will wait their turn on a first-come first-serve basis. Which is why a little polite dance of ‘Oh, excuse me’s and ‘Were you waiting?’s and ‘Oh no, I think you were first’s commences at the slightest sign of a breakdown of the queuing system.
I believe I am yet to witness a better example of this than one of our local coffee shops on Exmouth Market. It shall remain un-named – suffice it to say that it is a posh coffee shop, part of a local chain, selling lovey breads and pastries, as well as good, strong coffee. Everything feels luxurious and hand-made and sumptuous.
Everything, that is, except for the experience of trying to buy a sandwich and a coffee to take away at a busy lunchtime.
On entering the shop, you turn slightly to your left, where a member of staff takes your food order and wraps it up in a bag. From here you try to make your way to the other end of the shop where the queue ends. You wait in line, order your coffee at the till, and then hover uncomfortably behind the people queuing for the tills until your coffee is called out. During this time, every new person joining the queue will ask you whether you are queuing.
Here is what that looks like:
Existing cafe layout
You should think it doesn’t really matter. In the bigger scheme of things of course it doesn't. But here are two reasons why if it were your business, it would matter:
1. On more than one occasion, I was on my way to this shop to pick up a bread and some lunch, looked at the knot of people near the entrance and walked on to another café down the road.
2. It is completely unnecessary. There are many easy ways in which this shop could be re-organised so that people could come in, pick up some food, or order at the till and then get a seat in the back, and not tread on each other’s toes.
Here is just one as an example:
Cafe layout tweaked to make it run smoothly
Easy.
Another advantage of this layout is that when you look in through the window, rather than seeing someone standing at a till, you see delicious pastries and someone preparing coffee. Because, what you want your customers to think of when they look at your cafe is how tasty your food is, not how much they will have to pay for it.
As with many things in this series, it all comes down to common sense, and to being able to predict how the space will be used before you spend your precious resources on a fit-out. Unfortunately, there are a million and one little things that can go wrong when fitting out your cafe or shop. When you walk into a shop and it is a pleasant experience where everything 'feels right', it is because an awful lot of planning and thinking has gone into the design and the layout to make it feel like the most natural and logical solution in the world.