The team at Urban Eats want to help you with the conceptualization, design and construction of your Restaurant Concept/Project. Our services include:
- Conceptualize, Design and Build Original Restaurant & Bar concepts that champion the “feel” and integrity of a community.
- Feasibility and Impact Studies identifying potential restaurant sites, construction challenges, interior spacing & sizing, infrastructure needs, ideal tenant mix.
- Local-Friendly Design Attributes that produce a “sense of place” and attract authentic, homespun restaurant food concepts and operators.
- Kitchen Designs & Equipment Specification for the educational, hospitality and corporate sectors.
- Mixed Use & Commercial Development Consulting analyzing impact on development with regards to signage, patio-scapes, waste removal, odor and grease exhaust, noise,parking, pedestrian flows, etc.
food truck from santa ana
If you’re my age, (mid forties), than you probably remember the sheer joy of hearing the Good Humor Ice Cream Truck bell in the distance on a hot Summer day. ”Mom, the Ice Cream Man’s coming! I need money! Mom, no I reeeeally need money, now!” Upon approach this kiddie apothecary on wheels drew hordes of frantic children pied piper-like towards it, screaming for Push-Ups and Orange Creme Bars. As a kid, everything about this event was magical and ominous. The colorful truck with compact stainless doors that bellowed out white plums of cold vapor was straight out of OZ. The fact that I could get a Rainbow Pop brought to me in my manicured suburban playground was evidence enough that I lived in a wonderful world.
Flash forward 35 years and the joy has returned to a street near you, and it’s not just ice cream anymore. Many chefs in cities across the U.S. have turned to creating restaurants on wheels. Food Trucks, or Chuck Wagons as they’re called, offer an exciting way to deliver an eclectic variety of foods to a wide audience without a traditional brick and mortar restaurant. This seems to be a great and successful trend that has developed, both for the chef and for the consumer. The convenience of a food truck fits right in with today’s consumer demand for choice, speed and variety. Chef’s are attracted to the pop-up flexibility of the food truck, which allows them to reach an instant audience and receive immediate customer feedback. The snacking and grazing aspect of food trucks is also popular among hungry customers looking to refuel between traditional meals.
Vendors in Los Angeles, Portland, Austin and New York, to great success, are hawking all types of foods, including burritos, burgers, Korean tacos, mexidogs and more. However, given that the food truck phenomenon is relatively new, some cities, including Atlanta, have a baffling maze of permits, rules and regulations that an aspiring mobile chef has to navigate before beginning this culinary road-trip. And the freedom for food truckin’ in any location can be limited too. Read More
Have you performed a restaurant audit lately? I’m not talking about about an accounting audit, (although that’s not a bad idea either), but rather having a consultant take an unbiased look at the key brand components of your operation. A restaurant brand audit is a great opportunity to get an objective analysis of the customer’s experience, management performance, operations, menu item mix, physical plant and more. Many restaurant owners lose perspective because they get caught in the vortex of operational minutia. A restaurant audit is an affordable exercise that all owners should perform in order to regain perspective and realign their brand, food and customer’s experience.
The information contained in an audit can help ownership and management strategically plan for the future. Let’s face it, running a restaurant takes a lot of hard work and long hours. Therefore leveraging your restaurant resources to the fullest is paramount. Wasting time and money on actions that do not augment your brand, the customer’s experience and put more dollars in your till are just that, a waste. Audits reveal beneficial data that can help to identify product and service inconsistencies, customer disconnects, special events or promotions that are actually interfering with your core message rather that bolstering it. Read More
Pine Lake, GA is a hidden gem just minutes from Atlanta and Stone Mountain. Part European village and part bohemian getaway Pine Lake offers history, community and postcard respite all wrapped in one. The small lake is surrounded by rustic cottages originally built by Atlanta’s elite during the early 20th century. Today, urban pioneers, families, and artists have nestled into this borough with big plans for the future.
There is a renovated restaurant space available just blocks from the lake. The space is fully equipped with a exhaust hood, furniture, walk-in cooler/freezer, sinks, convection oven, etc. Hardwood floors, open ceilings and a out door deck are some additional features. The space is ripe for a neighborhood joint selling pizza, burgers, burritos, soups or other casual fare. Bring your concept, hang a sign and open for business. $3,000/month includes all equipment.
Working in collaboration with Miller Coors, Inc., The Atlanta Falcons and Concessions International, Urban Eats Consulting Group developed a rebranding package for an aging restaurant/lounge located in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. UE Consulting provided interior design consultation, floor plans, color renderings, finish material boards, furniture, lighting specs and corporate branded design fixtures. In order to meet budget, UE Consulting transformed existing restaurant design features with low cost finishes to create a modern, urban “look and feel”.
Problem: A dingy, outdated corporate dining facility providing no culinary escape for the hungry office employee. Solution: An Urban Eats Consulting Group renovation to the rescue! Fresh and simple with a touch of retro describes the new look at 360 Interstate North Corporate Campus – St Charles Deli space. Workers can now refuel and recharge in an open, sunlit environment that stimulates the mind, body and soul. UE Consulting provided all new design collateral including wall finishes, murals, countertops, laminates, lighting, ceiling and flooring. Renderings, floor plans and color boards too.
Guest Blog Post from Judi Knight of New Tricks Web Design
Often People ask us to help their restaurant come up in the search engines. We take a look, but sometimes we cannot do anything to really help it succeed without redoing the site. Sites that are created in Flash or don’t have good navigation just need to be redone where they can start building up organic search. If you own a restaurant and you want to have a successful website there are some “musts”. Here are some of them:
1. Your site must have a branded look. It can be fun and whacky or serious and sedate, but it must look pulled together and appealing.
2. You need your menus on your site so that they can be read and downloaded. Be sure they are up to date so people who come for a particular dish are not disappointed.
3. A printable menu – By offering a printable take-out menu you not only allow people to easily order your food, you also save money on printing and save time on phone calls. PDFs are always nice.
4. Don’t make people think – the website must be simple and easy to use.
5. Include a blog- Use it to post specials and have news of the staff and patrons. Include pictures and videos to promote your restaurant. Blog posts can be pushed out to Twitter and Facebook Fan Pages. Read More
While I’m out and about I run across properties that have characterisitcs of great restaurants. I would like to show everyone the cool places that I find so that you all can turn these wonderful properties into spectacular restaurants!
Todd Semrau wrote an article for Atlanta’s Finest Dining magazine titled, Urban Renewal Makes for Strange Bedfellows. In the article, Todd discusses the impact that local restaurants have on their communities and how some local restaurants have or have the potential to become tipping points for unprecedented growth within a community. Grindhouse Killer Burgers, in the Sweet Auburn Curb Market, exemplifies a phenomena and shows that unique restaurant concepts can thrive in quirky environments. Read the whole article.
Urban Eats Consulting Group (UE) was hired by Atlanta real estate firm Morris and Fellows to analyze their restaurant tenant performance within selected commercial developments. UE is providing concept evaluation, P&L analysis, operation & labor analysis and industry trend recommendations. The goal of the collaboration was to identify sales enhancement techniques, cost cutting measures and rebranding opportunities to bolster the long term performance of the exisitng tenant in lieu of incurring costs to re-market the property.
Urban Eats was interviewed on its opinion about restaurant rooftop patios for an article in Nightclub and Bar Magazine, titled, The Great Outdoors, written by Jenny Adams.
Jenny writes,
“What’s Involved in Adding a Patio or Rooftop Bar in 2010? While patrons find an outdoor setting invigorating, operators find patio and rooftop space can add an immense amount of value to a venue. The industry saw a sharp rise in outdoor areas a few years ago because of smoking bans, but the trend is still moving upward at a steady pace for 2010. Venues in climates warm and cold are embracing the great outdoors; poolside “daylife” events are the rage in Vegas and Miami, while rooftop or patio bars are hot in unlikely spots such as New York, Chicago and Cleveland. Wonderful technology is available to battle both snow and sun, and with costs of construction at an all-time low, this might be an ideal year to take advantage of an outdoor space and increase profits. Here’s what you should know before you take the leap. . . “Read the article.
