Tagged Articles
Form + Function
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2025 Award Winners
rd+d exists to share projects, examples and stories that educate and inspire. When the rd+d awards were launched nine years ago, our team wanted to highlight the projects that made readers proud
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Form + Function: Fanning the Flames
Kevin Gillespie has had an open fire in every restaurant he’s opened but one, and that was only because he couldn’t get the permitting approved.
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Form + Function: Sushi Bars
Sushi restaurants are deviating from the script. Designers are adding flair, modernity, color, and the unexpected.
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A Look at Airport Restaurants
Airline travel is booming, which means a lot of eyeballs on brands within airports and lots of hungry passengers to tempt.
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2024 Award Winners
Let’s take a moment and celebrate these fabulous, functional designs judged to be among the best of the best in rd+d’s annual contest.
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Form + Function: Finishing Touches
In an Instagram world where a few posts can catapult a restaurant’s popularity, restaurateurs worry about far more than food and service.
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Form + Function: Coffee Bars
Coffee is hot, even though it is sometimes served on ice. Over the past few decades, the explosion of coffee culture in the U.S. sparked rapid growth of coffee-centric
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Flexible Kitchen Design
Rapidly changing consumer tastes put pressure on restaurants to update menus frequently.
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Form + Function: High-Volume Restaurants
Dining establishments serving thousands a day must design and plan for maximum efficiency or risk service meltdowns that annoy customers and could lead to social media posts that harm their
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Form + Function: Outdoor Dining
With pandemic fears receding, it turns out that patrons still love al fresco dining.
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Form + Function: Buffet Service
With the COVID pandemic retreating, people are more comfortable returning to normal activity, including venturing to restaurants — even in packed indoor settings. This includes indulging in
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Form + Function: Wayfinding
For best results, it’s important that wayfinding elements clearly support their intended purpose and are in sync with your branding.
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Form + Function: Seating
You can tell a lot about a restaurant by observing the seating.
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Form + Function: Juice & Smoothie Bars
Two-and-a-half decades after the juice bar chain Juice It Up! launched, managers concluded that the store design urgently needed a reboot.
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The New Fundamentals of Space Management
Mandated dining room closures in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic left many restaurant operators grappling with how to best utilize their space for an unexpected shift to off-premises
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Self-Service in the Pandemic’s Wake
When the COVID-19 pandemic effectively forced a nearly nationwide shutdown of in-person dining in 2020, establishments like Pizza Inn had an existential crisis.
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Form + Function: Expo Stations
Like most restaurateurs during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lisabet Summa, co-owner of Big Time Restaurant Group, had to adapt expediting stations to make order fulfilment as efficient as possible.
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Drive-Thrus Trends
The COVID-19 pandemic led to a surge in drive-thru and curbside pickup, and QSRs were well-positioned to take the lead. As demand for drive-thru service spiked, car queues and wait times
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Private Dining
Creating welcoming, attractive private dining spaces is essential to the business plan for many restaurateurs.
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Form + Function: Makelines
Makelines foster interaction between guests and staff, offering high customization, and using fresh, visually attractive fruits, vegetables and other fare to convey a healthy food vibe.
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A/V Equipment Considerations
For many customers, sights and sounds are important parts of a restaurant visit. Whether it’s background music, a lively pop soundtrack, TVs showing a big sporting event or a DJ laying down
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Form + Function: Designing Restaurant Entryways
You only get one chance to make a first impression. Typically, a patron’s first take of a restaurant centers on the entry area, both inside and outside. The entrance’s design from signage to door
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Form + Function: Wall Coverings in Restaurant Design
Wall coverings are one of the keys to realizing the design vision. They can serve as backdrops that frame a space, provide wayfinding cues or, in the case of a feature wall or mural,
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Form + Function: Getting Graphics Right
Of all the tools available to designers to create a distinctive appearance, none may be more powerful than graphics. Logos, posters, menu boards, photographs, wallpaper, and printed
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Form + Function: Open Kitchens in Restaurant Design
An “open kitchen” is an imprecise term encompassing many types of designs. Depending on who you ask, an open kitchen can range from providing a view to the back of the house through a large
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Form + Function: Bar Design
Form and function are intertwined within a bar; one cannot exist without the other, but they can often be at odds,” says Alex Day, co-owner of Death
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Form + Function: Outdoor Dining
The arrival of spring may bring daffodils and gentle breezes, but it also signals the arrival of restaurant patrons who want to sit outside.
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Form + Function: Restroom Design
When it comes to restaurant design, bathrooms have long been overlooked. But with an ever-increasing focus on the overall experience, customers and operators are viewing restaurant restrooms as
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Form + Function: Prepare for Takeout
Operators have several options when making room for takeout within a restaurant’s four walls. They can decide to renovate their existing dining room, or
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Form + Function: LED Lighting
Light Emitting Diode (LED) lighting technology has come a long way and is developing so quickly that even lighting designers are hard-pressed to keep up. “There are
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