Most restaurants aim to please by offering a variety of foods that will appeal to a large customer base. They strive for a pleasant appearance and efficient service. Concept restaurants stray from these goals. In a concept restaurant, customers get an out of the ordinary dining experience, according to the restaurant theme. The twist can be almost anything that is different than “normal restaurants”: the menu, decoration of the interior and tableware, location, experience, or a combination of these factors. Opening a themed restaurant has high risks. Sometimes the concept is interesting enough to draw customer at first, but too far-fetched to convince diners to return. Below is a list of 10 interesting restaurant themes. They range from beautiful scenery, to rashly daring.
10. Famous Service- Some restaurants are note-worthy for their fine service and attention to customers. However, top customer service is not the only way for a restaurant’s service to gain attention. Dick’s Last Resort (Boston, USA) has notoriously rude waiters. The Hooters chain restaurants promise a family dining experience, delivered by beautiful waitresses in revealing attire.
9. Themed Menu- Conflict Kitchen (Pittsburgh, USA) based its menu off of politics. The dishes offered are all ethnic dishes, originating in countries the USA is in conflict with.
8. One Main Menu Item- another way to spice up (or spice down) a menu is to offer a selection made up of only one main ingredient. OatMeals (NYC, USA) offers everything made from oatmeal; from savory and sweet oatmeal, to oatmeal cookies, the menu seeks to draw oatmeal lovers and adventurous diners to explore the versatility of the ingredient. Posibly the most popular main menu item is chocolate, but there are also business that incorporate blueberries, apples, potatoes, and even garlic into every dish!
7. Molecular Gastronomy- Alinea (Chicago, USA) is probably the most famous restaurant that build dishes using the science of molecular gastronomy. The idea behind this fad is to use science of flavors and chemicals, often mixed extremely well with a blender, and sometimes left overnight to better mix them, to make food that will taste like the original ingredient, but will have a manipulated texture and appearance.
6. Incredible Interiors- Snow (Finland) and IceBar (Norway) are two of many venues that boast ice interiors. Businesses with unique interiors will draw customers whom are curious to see how the concept was executed and want to enjoy and interesting environment.
5. Experiencing a Lifestyle- there has been a recent increase in the number of theme restaurants that seeks to give the customer an experience that mimics the life-style of others. Pitch-Black (Beijing), Blackout (Tel Aviv), and Opaque (various USA locations) allow diners to experience what it feels like to dine out for the vision-impaired.
4. All-round Concept- some concept restaurants design every aspect of their restaurant and dining experience around the central theme. Rosengrals Medieval Restaurant (Riga, Latvia) boasts a medieval menu, candle-lit medieval décor, and servers dressed in medieval attire.
3. Location- a great location can make a business thrive and be the concept itself. Just a few of these concepts are underwater restaurants, dining in the air while hanging from a construction crane, restaurants in the middle of the ocean, and tree-house cafés.
2. Unusual Payments- many restaurants around the world promise customers a free meal if their order is finished in a certain amount of time. For example, Kooky Canuck (Memphis, USA) will not charge a diner if he/she finishes a 7.5 pound steak in under one hour. Other restaurants challenge themselves, and their servers, to provide the best service possible, by allowing customers to pay what they want, based on their perceived value of the meal.
1. Wild Experiences- The best example of a wild dining experience is the Cannibalistic Sushi bar (Japan), where customers are brought a “cadaver” made of dough skin and sauce blood, and are instructed to “dissect” the cadaver and eat the “edible organs,” or sushi, inside.