Back of House Planning – An Industrial Engineer’s Viewpoint

The Back Of House (BOH) of any hospitality asset model is a function of the Front of House (FOH). The sizes and the relative locations of the components that make up the support structure should be efficiently weaved together within a footprint that makes sense in light of what the Front of House needs to do, which is to fulfil and enhance customer expectations and experience. The Back Of House planning should not be attempted without understanding the business model of the Front Of House.

The planning of the Back Of House involves the field of industrial engineering, which is an engineering discipline that is concerned with the optimization of complex operational processes, systems, or organizations by developing, improving and implementing integrated systems of people, money, materials, knowledge, information, energy media and equipment. It requires an intrinsic knowledge of automation and logistics. It also functions to optimise real estate usage and rationalise manual tasks. As real estate has become exceedingly expensive and therefore scarce, developers try to increase revenue per sqm of FOH GFA by increasing restaurant seats, banquet seats and fitting more guest rooms into the room matrix. This can be counterproductive if guest experience is compromised. A poorly planned or undersized BOH will not be able to support an over-imagined FOH. When development budgets are resultingly blown out of proportion, watering down the overall product of both FOH and BOH seems to be the most common knee-jerk corrective measure adopted. As a result, the product begins to suffer and guest experience is compromised. It also becomes more difficult to attract and retain the depleting pool of staff who refuse to work under dysfunctional conditions, further exacerbating the poor guest experience highlighted earlier.

I was once faced with an immense value engineering requirement imposed on a lux hotel design, where I was required to severely water down the BOH budget as part of a cost optimisation measure which I was reluctant to do after the first round of efforts. My suggestion to the client was to differ the construction of what I thought was one restaurant too many. In this way, the cost expanded on the kitchen and restaurant Interior Design and Mechanical & Electrical components could be saved instead of watering down the quality of an entire BOH support system. The reasoning was that the client could construct the restaurant once the hotel starts to generate sufficient revenue to fund the eventual construction of the differed restaurant. Fortunately, the client accepted my suggestion, and today, this space has evolved to become a specialty plug-in restaurant for celebrity chefs.

It is critical that the right consultant be called upon to address the back of house, one with the requisite experience, resources and know-how to understand how the BOH should work in tandem with the FOH. The BOH will encompass all support areas including operational spaces, kitchens, laundry, solid waste management, stores and logistics.