Restaurants and food stalls are one of the most common types of businesses that entrepreneurs go into.
Just walk into any shopping mall and it shouldn’t be surprising at all that up to one-third of the retailers there are restaurants, cafes, and fast food chains.
The main reason being that restaurants have low variable costs.
Think about it this way, a typical retail outlet like an apparel store have to spend a lot of money on inventory so that they have product to sell their customers.
Manufacturing and shipping can then take months from first order to the products having landed to making it’s way into the shop.
This means that a regular retailer have to spend a lot of money upfront for month’s worth of stocks in order to avoid having a store filled with empty shelves. This is without mentioning the amount of stock that will never sell.
Contrast this with a restaurant.
Restaurants, especially those with owners who are serious about their food on the menu, would store enough food and ingredients in the restaurant to last a few days at most.
This means that there is a very low variable operating cost.
Raw food, ingredients and condiments are topped up only when they run out. And if sales is not high, there is no need at all to purchase more stuff to keep in the kitchen.
And if there is a low amount of patrons, they can save on part-time staff by asking them to stay home.
If we keep on this line of thought, a retailer would need to pay for months worth of inventory while a restaurant will only have to pay for inventory a few days at a time.
This is a big reason why restaurants can have a lot of control over operating costs.
If you are starting a restaurant, coffee house, or something of that sort, you might be in the midst of planning the layout of the space for remodeling. And somehow the feng shui of the place has popped into your mind.
How do you feng shui your restaurant?
Restaurants are fire based businesses
This has nothing to do with eating establishments being reputed to do a lot of firing of staff as it’s a high turnover business.
It is a “fire” elemental business because of all the cooking with open-flame stoves, ovens, microwaves, boilers, etc.
Fire is essential for such a business as it is the means to producing food items that consumers pay for.
This means that you need to pay particular attention to the South section of the shop as this is the area where the resident fire energy resides.
Ideally, you would want to have your kitchen set up here.
If you are lucky enough to have this layout configurations available to you, then do go ahead with this planning while keeping some basic kitchen rules in mind.
The south is also a place that represents reputation and status. Firing up this area will also give a boost for recognition luck.
However, do be extra meticulous in your fire safety protocols as such a strong fire presence can be hazardous if you are not careful.
If the south is impossible to fit in a kitchen, the alternatives are as follows.
- South
- Northeast
- Southwest
- West
What ever you do, NEVER locate the kitchen at the Northwest or North.
When the kitchen, with such intense fire energy is located at the northwest, it is situation we call “fire at heaven’s gate”.
This is where the Chien trigram is.
Which basically means that there will be serious hardship and problems for patriarchs. And is a sure recipe for a disastrous business venture.
The north is a place where water resides and is symbolic of wealth. The energy in this sector will not be able to bring you wealth if it is perpetually busy with putting out the fire energy in the kitchen.
It would be a good area for tables and chairs for customers to keep the area active. It’s also good to have a water feature in the north area.
Celestial animals
Because the sitting and facing direction of the F&B retail space, including the direction of the front door, is not known to me, there’s no way for me to suggest specific recommendations based on flying stars feng shui.
So we have to stick with feng shui concepts that can be relevantly applied under these circumstances.
Landscape feng shui which uses the famous 4 celestial animals is one of them.
Since this is a restaurant, which is sort of a retail store, it is assumed that the location already has a tortoise at the back for support, and open space at the front.
Retail outlets are usually set up this way. It’s not easy to find a retailer with open space and human traffic from the back instead of the front. Thus, that assumption.
The focus now will be on green dragon on the left and white tiger on the right.
To make things clear, the left and right refers to the orientation when you are facing out from the store front. Not when you are outside looking in at the store front.
The left side represents males and the right represents females.
So if you are a male owner you want a left side that is more active than the right. Conversely, a female owner would want a more active right side.
This also means that if the main entrance to the restaurant is on the right side, and you are a male owner, this is not going to be good feng shui for your business unless you have a female partner.
In which, she is going to enjoy more happiness and success in the restaurant than you. She will eventually become the dominant partner in the business, if she’s not already so.
If you are a man and the sole owner, it is best to relocate the entrance to the left. This is so as to keep the left side where the dragon reside active.
Moreover, yang energy which is symbolic of good fortune moves from left to right according to water theory.
By moving the entrance from the right to left, you don’t just awaken the dragon, but also switches the water movement, in the form of human traffic, from yin to yang.
If the location of the restaurant has a wide open right side of windows while the left is all walled up, then this is also an ideal configuration for female owners.
In this case, you might want to use blinders or posters to cover up the right side so that the wide open space on the tiger side is visually removed.
8 Mansions feng shui
Another feng shui school of thought that can be easily applied here is the 8 mansions.
If for example, you are male and have a kua number of 3, the favorable directions are south, north, southeast, and east.
This means that these are sectors of the space that are best planned to be active areas.
The unfavorable areas would then be west, southwest, northeast and north west.
This will be areas where it is best left quiet and will be suitable for toilets, storerooms, missing corners, etc.
Be mindful that in this example we are using, the southeast and east are favorable areas. But they are of a wood element base.
As there might be a lot of steel equipment that a restaurant uses, you’d want to avoid locating them in this 2 sections.
South coincidentally is a good luck area and we have already discussed how to enhance it previously.
If you can’t locate the seating areas in the north, then locating the washing area here might be an alternative to consider.
More feng shui tips for restaurants in general
- Keep the place neat, clean, and clutter food. It’s good hygiene and good feng shui. A conducive environment can induce patrons to come back too.
- Try to incorporate plants into the interior design. They can help to block pointed areas and hide unsightly protruding wall areas. They also help to replenish the air with oxygen too.
- The cashier is best placed on the north or north east. It must have a strong and sturdy backing as if a mountain is supporting it.
- Since a restaurant is a “fire” type of business, favorable colors for things like paint would be red, green and purple. However these might be colors that would detrimental to your personal feng shui. In this case, use a color that would balance things out and create harmony. For example, if you have a personal element of metal and the red of fire is will harm you, then using an earth tone would harmonize the conflicting elements as fire would feed earth, which in turn will energize metal.
- Always keep the interaction of the 5 elements in mind when making decisions on the interior design and decor.
- The brighter the lighting, the more yang energy, and the more active and noisy you can expect the place to be when open for business. Dimmer light will create a more calm and soothing atmosphere suitable for posh cafes.
- The jade plant is a plant that can bring business success luck and a popular gift to new business. Consider having one in the shop.
Finally, if you are willing to do a little reading, consider picking up a book on flying stars feng shui.
It can help you identify where the wealth star is residing in the restaurant. And activating it can do wonders towards the success of the business.
