FAMILY RESTAURANT – FORMAT COMPLICATIONS
Abroad, the situation is the same. In some, even pritelnyh, restaurants there is a note that you can have dinner with young children until a certain time, for example, until 19.30. Try typing in a search engine child-friendly restaurant with the addition of the name of a European city. I do not think that more than two dozen will be typed, even in London or Paris. Only fast food chains really target families with children. There will be chairs for babies, and separate playgrounds for older children, and children’s dinners with toys.
In Russia, the segment of restaurants with children’s animation and game rooms is much more developed than abroad. On weekends, it will not be difficult to find a place where parents can “hand over” the child and relax. This is primarily due to the need to fight for the client. Still, in our country, going to a restaurant for the bulk of the population is not an everyday event. Therefore, much time is devoted to selecting a suitable place. Muscovites are ready to go through half a city to visit a particular institution. In Europe, everything is simpler, mostly people visit places “around the corner”. And only for banquets they are looking for something special. Therefore, Moscow restaurateurs are always in tension, they need to constantly come up with something new to attract a client. Children’s animation is written in a separate line. But this is only for the weekend. There are no family restaurants for every day. Sometimes you can find a children’s cafe with play complexes and wooden furniture. Or a kids club with the opportunity to eat. So it is also abroad. Among the target audience of such institutions, most likely, children who do not go to kindergarten, and their mothers and nannies, meeting with their friends. They, as a rule, have a snack here “at the same time”, and do not come to eat specially.
Despite the fact that parents of all countries dream of their children eating healthy and wholesome food, it is difficult to get it in restaurants. Even in decent establishments with a check from 50 euros or with Michelin stars, sausages and nuggets with french fries appear in the children’s menu. Why? So that children do not act up and eat what they give. Neither parents nor staff need children to be fed from a spoon, exhorting them to eat another bite. There are a number of win-win dishes with which everyone operates. But this approach is interesting to parents only when they come to the restaurant once a month. If we are talking about creating an institution that is visited by families with children living nearby, then the children’s menu should be varied and nutritious, formed with the help of nutritionists, containing useful components. With unusual innings that amaze children. For many parents, the wording with the addition of the prefix “bio” is already an indicator of the right choice. The main thing is that there should be enough parents at the restaurant location who are ready to pay for the pleasure of feeding their children farm products prepared using the latest technology.
The interior of a family restaurant can be anything, the main thing is that there are no curtains that can be torn off, while dropping a cornice over your head, Chinese floor vases that are easy to smash and cut your hands into pieces, and cabinets from which everything falls out onto the floor. Everything else is a matter of taste. Bright interiors are good for attracting the attention of children, but then they begin to tire both adults and children. Light objects are too easily soiled because children don’t wipe their hands and mouths after eating, scramble onto chairs in shoes, drop glasses of juice and turn over plates of soup. The basic requirement for furniture and walls is that everything should be easily washed.
Often, I personally had to deal with a situation where food was brought, and the child enthusiastically plays with the animator and does not want to hear anything about returning to the table. Or “stuck” while watching a cartoon on a TV in a children’s room. Here you need to proceed from the priorities of the parents: they came to meet friends, chat, relax or feed the children, surprise them with any dishes that they can’t cook at home. In our restaurant we conduct master classes in baking for kids. Since they pass at certain hours, parents usually bring their children by this time. Therefore, you need to guess in order to prepare children’s dishes by the time the cookies or shortcakes go into the oven. Or give a break “to reinforce forces” between games with animators. In the restaurant “Yves. Durdin ”organize wonderful performances for children, they begin at 15-16 hours, when they already ate.
Opening a restaurant is an expensive pleasure. In our country, it is very rare that an institution is located in its own premises, most often it is a rental, and it is very high, as is the rate on loans. Still in Russia there is a negative experience of various economic disasters. Therefore, everyone expects to recoup their costs in a short time.