Imagine this scenario for a moment: You go into a restaurant, and it is nearly empty, so the hostess tells you to feel free to sit anywhere you like. You glance around the room, and notice that there are booths around the perimeter of the room, most of them with a window to the outside. You also see several tables and chairs in the center of the room.
Where do you sit: at one of the booths around the perimeter of the room, or at a table in the center of the room?
If you’re like most people, you’ll find yourself heading toward one of the seats around the perimeter of the room. But YOU didn’t really make that decision. At least not consciously. Your subconscious lured you to the booth, based on thousands of years of primal programming to seek out places of “high prospect, high refuge, and high protection.” Sociologists call this one of the basic “human universals” -- behavior traits that are common across all cultures.
I’ve just finished several years of studying eight specific primal motivators that influence behavior – especially buying behavior in offices, retail stores, restaurants and even seminar rooms. The results are fascinating.
In this article, I’ll talk about how changing the seating pattern in a restaurant can increase profitability. This is the first of a series of articles where I’ll talk about how to use seating to increase employee productivity, increase the reception a speaker gets, increases the amount that people buy from an insurance agent, and even how certain seating patterns can impact a patient’s perception of pain in a doctor’s office.
But first, let’s talk eateries. Eating establishments that have more tables and chairs around the perimeter of the room than in the center make more money. “The Impact of Restaurant Table Characteristics on Meal Duration and Spending,” detailed in Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, found that people seated in booths spend more per person per meal than those seated at tables. Our primal comfort factor makes us more generous with our money. This and other studies also show that anchored tables –those around the perimeter of the room -- also tend to fill up faster than those in the center of the room because we prefer to be seated in a place where we are protected from at least one side and where we can look out to the vista to see what’s coming. And finally, restaurants that offer us some type of overhead protection (other than just a roof) are most appealing. We like to sit under trees (whether fake or real) and canopies.
All of these restaurant seating preferences can be traced back to our primordial preference for what anthropologists call high prospect and high profile vistas. Booths, walls, and vegetation make our reptilian brain feel comfortable, because they offer us a refuge and make us feel protected. There may not be any predators around, yet nonetheless we instinctively feel more comfortable when we have some barrier of protection – especially from the behind us and above us. I’ve noticed a lot of restaurants are getting very creative in how they provide high-refuge seating – and thereby increasing their profits. One example is a cozy little eatery on Catalina Island off the California coast. When I strolled into the restaurant, I noticed a very interesting seating pattern. The tables around the perimeter of the room all were next to little windows, and each window was covered with a little canopy that extended out over the table. But what was most clever was how this establishment soothed the reptilian brain of folks seated in those center-of-the-room seats. The restaurant owners cleverly put a large tree in the center of the room, and constructed a large octagon-shaped bench seat around the tree trunk. So patrons seated at those eight tables in the center of the room have their backs to the tree trunk, and the tree branches provided a natural overhead canopy. This is in perfect alignment with our innate preferences.
OK, so not every restaurant owner can afford to rearrange his or her restaurant and put a big ol’ tree in the center. But another way to make those center-of-the-room seats more profitable is to do away with the table and chairs, and create pods of high-backed booths in the center of the room. While this arrangement doesn’t make for a “high prospect” vista, it does provide a “high refuge” and “high protection” seat. That’s better than just having an open seating area where the customer’s reptilian brain feels exposed and unprotected from all sides. Our primordial preferences are “high prospect” only from one side, or maybe two sides: we don’t like to have our backs exposed.
Recently I stopped in at a Panera Bread restaurant in a busy suburban Chicago shopping mall. Not one table was in an open or “unprotected” part of the room. All tables were placed around the perimeter of the room and most were booths. But what’s really interesting is that they managed to increase their seating by placing several tables out in the busy mall hallway. Now, normally this would be an unpleasant and unnerving place to sit down for a meal. But Panera created a mini refuge center right there in the center of the mall by strategically placing flower boxes along a wall and installing a large canopy overhead. Patrons feel protected by the outside wall of the restaurant and the flower boxes on one side, and by the canopy overhead. Being able to look out and watch all the shoppers go by provides a “high prospect” view as well.
Window seats in general provide us with a high prospect feel-good sense: we can look out and see anything that comes our way. Many studies have documented the decrease in stress of people who have a window with a view to the outside. (These include : “A Review of Psychological and Cultural Effects on Seating Behavior and Their Application to Foodservice Settings,” Journal of Foodservice Business Research, 5(2), 89-107; as well as Paco Underhill’s Why We Buy (New York:Simon & Schuster). Again, consciously we’re not looking for predators, but subconsciously we feel the need to be able to get a full view of our surroundings. We’ll also pay more for high prospect restaurant locations – such as rooftop restaurants or those on the top of a bluff with a wide vista. Restaurants that have an interior design that feeds into our need for high prospect / high refuge / high protection seating tend to have higher profits than restaurants that don’t.
But the application of this human universal is just the tip of the iceberg. If you’re a CPA, an insurance salesman or a business executive who makes regular sales calls, how you arrange the seating can determine how big your sale will be. I’ll talk about that in the next article.
There are over 400 of these “human universals” – patterns and environmental influencers that trigger feelings of comfort, trust and, subsequently, increased buying activity. I’ll explore a many of them in articles on this site. Many more are detailed in my upcoming book: “Instant Appeal: The Eight Primal Factors that Create Blockbuster Success for Any Business.” It’s being published by AMACOM in New York and will be released this November.
Using Primal Triggers to Increase Sales, Part 1. - To learn more about this author, visit Vicki Kunkel's Website.
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Vicki Kunkel
(Visit Vicki's Website)
Vicki Kunkel is an award-winning social
anthropologist who has been recognized as
an expert in persuasive communication by
many media outlets. She’s been
interviewed by MSNBC, CNN, Entprerpeneur
Magazine, and myriad local radio and
television stations across the U.S and
Canada. During the O. J. Simpson trial,
she was a regular guest expert on AP
Network News, commenting on the subliminal
body language messages sent by all the
players in that trial, as well as which
trial strategies would be most persuasive
with jurors. Vicki received the “Women
With Vision” award from the Women’s Bar
Association of Illinois for her
breakthrough research in primal persuasion
factors, and successful application of
those factors in business, law and
politics. She’s been the driving force
behind winning political campaigns and
blockbuster personal branding campaigns
for top CEOs. Her new book: Instant
Appeal: The Eight Primal Factors that
Guarantee Blockbuster Success, (AMACOM,
New York) will be released November, 2008.
Vicki also previously spent 11 years as
a TV news anchor and radio talk show host.
To learn more about business persuasion,
visit Vicki’s website at: www.beapow
erplayer.com.
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