How Circularity Can Influence Your Restaurant's Design for the Better

How circular design benefits the environment

Making a commitment to circular design in your food business will ultimately have a positive impact on the environment.

• Minimises resource consumption and negative impact. Circular design means choosing sustainable materials, reducing the consumption of energy, water and other resources and minimising the emissions,pollution and waste generated.
• Extends product lifecycles. By opting for durable materials that are designed to last, circularity offers an alternative to throw-away culture.
• Brings sustainability to the forefront. Products designed with circularity in mind help to raise awareness around the impacts of human wastefulness, a significant factor in the biodiversity and climate crises.

How circularity can improve design 

Bringing the principles of circularity into how you approach creative endeavours can influence your restaurant's design for the better.

• Takes things back to basics: By definition, circular design means adding only what’s needed. Without any unnecessary frills, this can create a simple and appealing aesthetic: minimalism at its most meaningful.
• Encourages creativity: If you’re designing a space with circular principles in mind, you have no choice but to get creative. Of course, once you take ‘cookie cutter’ mass-produced options off the table, design becomes a more challenging process – but this can really get the creativity flowing, resulting in something truly impressive.
• Makes for individuality: The result of all that creativity? A truly individual result that can help your restaurant, café, bar or hotel stand out from the crowd.

How Object Space Place designs with circularity in mind

We caught up with David Chenery, the founder of Object Space Place, a hospitality design studio that creates genuinely restorative restaurants. Here, we share some of his insights on refurbishing or building with an environmental impact.

David is quick to emphasise that doing nothing is always the most sustainable option; Object Space Place approaches every design decision with the goal of making the fewest changes necessary for an outstanding experience. This applies at every step, from deciding whether a café should be built in the first place (could the revenue stream be generated in another way?) to checking whether simple shelves could work instead of a fully fitted cupboard.

“Whenever we’re working on a new design project, there are three key aspects we look at before we create anything,” David says.

1. What is the least we can do to create something excellent?

“It forces you to look at the experience you’re delivering overall. What really matters to your customers? Once you know that, you can work back from there to find the minimum number of changes you can make to a building and the minimum number of new materials you can bring in to create that experience. Is there a way to do nothing? How much of the existing finishes can be left exposed? Is there a way to use something that already exists? Can we source reclaimed furniture or materials, or use a waste material we already own?

2. There is no ‘away’ when you throw something away.

“We’re always talking about the principles of a circular economy and thinking in terms of loops. Where did this material come from, and what was involved in that? Where is it going to go after this project finishes, and who is responsible for that? Can you design with the end of life in mind – for example, avoiding hybrid materials that cannot be recycled or fixed banquette seats that cannot be adjusted? When working with GAIL’s, we took out existing furniture from a project, had it repaired and used it in the next design site we were refurbishing for them.”

3. How much positive social value can you create from this project?

“So often, we’re looking at minimising negative environmental impact, but there’s actually a lot of good we can do as well. We work with a lot of social enterprises and charities, like RAW Workshop and Goldfinger, turning the materials we’re working with into beautiful pieces of furniture that can then be used in those projects.”

Circular design strategies for restaurants

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation gives the following strategies for circular design. Read on for an outline of these strategies and how they can be applied to the F&B industry.

1. Prioritise the highest value opportunities. Approaches like reuse, sharing, remanufacturing, and refurbishment require fewer resources than recycling, and should be selected first where possible. For example, designing your menu to use every part of each ingredient is preferable to redirecting wasted food.
2. Ask whether ownership is even necessary. A shift from ownership to access is a central concept of the circular economy. This could include everything from sharing a kitchen space to renting (rather than purchasing) equipment, vehicles or even uniforms.
3. Design products that last. Extending the life of a product allows it to remain in use for as long as possible. From front-of-house furnishings to your kitchen fridges and freezers,, invest in good quality, sustainable and energy-efficient materials and products designed for a long lifespan.
4. Make safe and circular material choices. Materials that are hazardous to humans or the environment are unsuitable for the circular economy. This can include everything from using non-toxic cleaning chemicals to choosing tables made from wood rather than synthetic, non-organic materials.
5. Reduce the resource requirements. Find solutions that use the minimum amount of material possible. Does that dish really need a garnish? Could your staff wear half-aprons rather than full-length?
6. Keep the future in mind. Make design choices that will allow for upgradability and repair, and avoid mixed materials that can’t easily be repurposed or recycled.

Learn more about embracing a zero-waste ethos on our News & Insights page, or read how ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ fits into the Food Made Good Standard here. Make sure to follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn for plenty of sustainability inspiration across every aspect of your hospitality operations!