BEACH DINER PROTOTYPE FOR RESTAURANT CHAIN

BEACH DINER PROTOTYPE FOR RESTAURANT CHAIN
Walls, Windows, Kitchen Space Designed Using "Value Engineering"
DINNER AT THE DINER "The more upscale Silver Diner prototype draws evening customers"
Chain Leader – September 2000 Vol. 5 No. 9
By Lisa Bertognoli,

The first customers to see what’s different about the Silver Diner in Virginia Beach, V.A., will be the ones looking at their feet. Instead of the familiar blue and white tile that graces the floor of the first 12 diners, they’ll find they’re standing on a vast expanse of pink marble.

When they look up, they’ll see that elegant tone repeated in touches around the restaurant. The burgundy booth cover, dark green and mahogany finishes, and full service bar are all touches previously not found in Silver Diners, which had pinkish booth covers and tabletops made of black faux marble. Even the shape of the restaurant is more upscale – square instead of U- or L-shaped in the classic diner mode.

"This looks like a high-class New York restaurant, " says Mary Eatinger, an architect at Helbing Lipp Ltd., the Vienna, V.A. firm that designed the new Silver Diner prototype.

While customers see a difference in the décor, Silver Diner executives see it in the cash register. This new diner grosses close to $70,000 a week, above the $55,000 to $60,000 budgeted, say Ype von Hengst, Vice President of culinary operations and co-founder of the Rockville, M.D. based chain. Even more important, dinner accounts for about half the day’s sales, compared with 35 per cent to 40 per cent at other units, von Hengst says.

That’s exactly the plan. Silver Diners have historically courted breakfast, lunch and dinner customers, but the company geared this restaurant expressly toward dinner, von Hengst says. "We still want families, but it’s always been our goal to build a place where people would be comfortable for dinner," he says.

For that reason, the Virginia Beach prototype will serve as the model for all future Silver Diners. The next is scheduled to open this month in a mall in Gaithersburg, MD. Three more will follow in 2001.

Starting from Scratch
The prototype diner was three years in the making, says Eatinger. "We picked through this meticulously," she says, adding that the design process included fashioning full-scale mockups of parts of the restaurant.

To keep Silver Diner motif, the exterior of the building retains the curvy silhouette, neon lighting and stainless-steel details of previous diners. Unlike the classic U- or L- shaped diner, however, this one is square, and the partly open kitchen is set back from diners. "It’s not as noisy," von Hengst says.

The square shape delights Greg Holson, operating partner at the restaurant. "The dining room is perfect p you can see everything from everywhere," he says, saying that’s important to manage both employees and customer service.

The 4,900-square foot space has 190 seats, compared with 240 in the average diner. To encourage crowds, there are only three deuce booths, Holson says. Booth seating remains popular ‘because 90 percent of customers want a jukebox," he adds.

Fewer seats mean the kitchen won’t be stressed during rush times. "In the last diner, we found that the capacity was overextended in the kitchen," von Hengst says. The smaller space also speeds turn times, to about 50 minutes at lunch and 70 at dinner, Holson adds.

Tight Turns
Alas, the smaller kitchen also resulted in a few design kinks. To start, refrigeration space was cut be about 40 percent, Holson says. A prep station in back was discarded and prep was moved to the line. While that move makes line cooks more productive, it also stresses them, especially since the advent of the only menu change – a salad with every entrée. That means preparing 400 salads a night, Holson says. The line itself is about nine inches too narrow for employees to work comfortably, he adds.

In another design mishap, the carpet in the "club car," so named because it has carpeting and tables instead of booths, has buckled due to close proximity to the high-humidity dish room. The carpet will be replaced with tile in the near future, Holson says. In addition, a bus station will be expanded and separated from customers by a wall of glass block.

Kitchen fixes will include widening the cook line, reducing the size of the office and putting in its place a prep table, an under counter refrigerator. In addition, a bus station off the kitchen will be replaced with a salad makeup station.

Those changes are expected to take place in the near future, and after they do, the Virginia Beach diner wills serve as the model for future Silver Diner, von Hengst says. "This is the model going forward," he says.