Opening a new restaurant or bar is very exciting and extremely stressful, there are so many things to organise from interior design and fit out to menu development and recruitment. I’ve been fortunate to work on over one hundred new openings, from independent boutique hotels to multi-venue pub chains so have seen at close hand how important it is to have a great team with all the required expertise.
Sadly, in my humble opinion, music is often low on the list of priorities and sometimes, is forgotten about completely but I encourage business owners to think about it early in the process, so you have a good chance to be happy on your opening night.
Designing a quality music offering takes thought, time and trial and error and it’s much easier to establish what might and might not work before the doors are opened but even then, a period of settling in should be allowed for during the opening weeks.
This may seem like a lot of work, but I think for many venues and brands it is worth it.
I have been involved in projects where the owner has a very clear idea of the part music plays in their vision and the type of music they want to hear. Of course, to a music consultant this is very helpful but more often a client would like some guidance and therefore I would start with some basic questions –
- What is the type of venue?
- Is there a particular brand theme?
- What are the opening times?
- Who are the customers?
- Are they dining, drinking or dancing?
- Are there any licence restrictions?
- Any there any space restrictions?
- Is the brand commercial or cool or something else?
- What is the weekly music and entertainment budget?
- How will the atmosphere need to change throughout the day and the week?
I would then put together some expected customer scenarios and try to imagine the music playing in each one, see the examples below –
Wednesday Lunchtime – 1pm
Groups of young professionals grabbing a quick lunch and gossiping about their day.
Music – Background Music System plays contemporary pop, soul and RnB from the last five years, tracks from popular albums, mid-tempo, easy on the ear, volume is at background levels.
Saturday Night – 10pm
Singles, couples, groups of friends, drinking prosecco, cocktails and craft beer, having fun and dancing to a DJ.
Music – DJ plays an upbeat multi-genre set of classics and current floor-fillers.
Once we have created a good overview of the entire week, I would then put together some playlists for myself and the client to review and reflect on what we like, don’t like, think will work and won’t work.
It’s important in this process to be as objective as possible and not let personal preferences have too much influence, unless that is the specific goal of the owner.
Fine tuning these initial playlists can be very time consuming but is a vital part of the process if the final music offering is to work in the venue.
As well as thinking about the style of music that will work in the venue it is important to consider how it will be delivered i.e. background music, DJ or live musicians. The method of delivery will greatly influence the sound system design, possibly interior design and certainly costs so, once again, it’s important to consider these during the venue design phase.
Hopefully the above will give you some idea about how to get the music right for your venue and if you would like to discuss further then please get in touch and “Let’s Talk About Music”.