B3 Designers Bar Design Experience is Extensive
As bar designers we are more than happy to meet with you and discuss your existing bar or a proposed new development that you are working on. We can offer you an initial free consultation at your existing venue or proposed new site. Our initial consultation helps us to understand what you would like to do and how we can best help you. We have many contacts within the bar industry and it maybe that we refer you to another colleague to help you achieve what it is you require. Our commitment is to building long term working partnerships. If we can't help you immediately, then we hope that our honest straight talking advice, will encourage you to return to us at a later date. Please browse our portfolio for some of our recent bar projects.
Designing or Re-designing a Bar
If you are in the process of setting up a new bar or re-designing an existing one, we can help you. We can produce designs for the luxury as well as the more accessible end of the market. We have a track record of producing designs that attract customers and lead to a highly profitable venues. Please view our portfolio, all these projects we designed with a fixed budget. Now each client is receiving a profitable return on their investment.
The Clients Objective
We understand that the objective to running a bar is to attract customers, which in turn leads to a fully packed venue and a profitable business.
Our fundamental objective is to ensure that the design attracts customers to the bar to make it a success. I am 100% convinced that good design is one of the major factors that attracts people to bar.
Good Design Creates Longevity
Longevity is as important to us as we know it will be to you. We do not design bars that are a flash in the pan fashion parades. We aim to design with the mind set that the design will past the test of time. Nobody wants to have a bar that needs to be totally redesigned within in 3 years. Therefore, we aim for a solution that are classic, contemporary and unique. This enables us to achieve longevity in all our designs. That means you can don’t have the added worry of a capital expense for a new refurbish just because the design is out of fashion.
Why do People go to Bars?
There are many reasons why people go to bars, the most obvious are: To socialise, meet a partner, to date, to drink, to celebrate an anniversary, to listen to good music, to escape or just to be out. But of all the bars that are available in an area, why do they choose a particular one? How much does the overall design, ambience, the comfort, the layout, the lighting and of course the toilets have an effect on their choice of venue? Customers on a subconscious level are constantly responding to the design of a space. They may not be able verbalise exactly why they like a space but people know a place is working and their vote is recognised by them frequenting the space.
Our second objective is to ensure that we give you an edge so that when people are deciding where to go out, your bar is the one that they think about. That is where we as design consultants can help find that edge that all bars need to remain popular.
What Attracts Customers into a Bar
Different bar drinkers are attracted to different things, therefore it is important that we as designers understand what the target audience is that you wish to attract. Once we have established the type of clientele, we can begin to work on designing a space that attracts these customers. However, the following points are consistent no matter what type of bar it is.
People attract People
The most common thing that attracts people in to a bar is other people, most times customers will spin on their heels when they enter a bar if it is empty. Therefore, we need to design the space to ensure the space looks buzzing even when there are only a few people in the bar.
Like moths to a flame
Secondly is light, in the evening there is nothing more seductive than a well lit bar to allure people into a space. During the day in good weather, everyone will want to sit outside. The UK has an unprecedented amount of people who will al-fresco at the first sign of sunshine. Failing sitting outside they will want to sit as close to a window as possible.
Bars need that ‘Je ne sais quai’
Without sounding poncy all bars need that ‘Je ne sais quai’. That certain something that gives them the edge to stand out from the rest. Now we are not talking super concepts here, sometimes the smallest Victorian pub can be put back on to the map of profitability just by some simple design implementations. If however you are in need of attracting attention of a higher spending audience then the design might need to compete with the global market of super bars. We specialise in both these areas, rising to whichever challenge presents itself to us.
Layout and Service
The efficiency of service offered by the staff is an important force and you will wonder what we as designers can do to enable this from a design perspective. It’s all about layout; customers want to be able to get a drink easily even when the bar is busy. There is nothing more off-putting than to have to rugby scrum your way to the front of the bar just to get a round of drinks in. This maybe due to there not being enough staff working or because their isn’t enough space for the staff. The bar is just too small to cope with the volume of customers. Our role is to ensure that this balance is accommodated for and ensure that the layout is as practical as possible. In the designing of the Babel bar we encountered this exact problem and resolved it by repositioning the bar.
Having done studies on bars, we noticed a bar had a particular bottleneck. We tested a theory and implementing an additional temporary bar, there was suddenly more space for customers, the queuing times reduced and the venue took more money behind the bar. We also used this temporary bar to run a table service - this also added an element of luxury, as well as reducing the amount of people having to wait at the bar.
Matters to assess before we conceptualise
We would start with understanding the type of concept or audience you would like to appeal to, the size of space you have or want to trade from and what your approximate spend on the fit-out would be. Once we have this information we would then seek out similar competition that is both successful and not and evaluate what they are doing right and wrong. This information would help us understand where this bar needs to be from a design perspective.
the B3 creative team for an initial consultation or more information on designing a bar.
