Pizza Today - June 2016 - 32

Sundstad says. Choose a table, sit at
it and then watch customers to see
how they're "flowing." Is there a path
for wait staff to deliver food without
crashing into customers?
"If you handle velocity in a way that
benefits the customer, and wait lines
are not long, you can increase sales,"
he says.
* Vary seating to play with the
sense of scale. Usually with a smaller

space, people think they can only fit
"so many tables," Sundstad says. Get
creative with a mix of table heights and
sizes -- a large community table, lower
seating, bar seating, a counter by the
window or even an "armchair nook"
with two plush chairs facing each other
in a corner. It makes the more space
engaging, and the more variation, the
better. "One level of low seating consumes space," he says.
Jim Jacobs, owner of Pisanello's
Pizza in Mount Pleasant, Michigan,
knocked down a wall in his shopping center to expand the restaurant
in 2014. He nearly doubled the space
from 50 seats to about 90.
But before that, seating was at
a premium. The place had become
incredibly popular after he added a
buffet lunch service. To accommodate
the lunch crowd, Jacobs built a bench
along the length of one wall and placed
tables in front of it. "They can be
shoved together for whatever size you
want -- two or 20 people," he says.
A combination of tables and booths,
with Jacobs' personal woodworking
touch, created a warm and eclectic
space. "I made 80 percent of the table
tops out of a local red oak board that
I bought at a saw mill. Plus, I took
some old maple top butcher block
tables that we used for prep tables in
the back, and I sanded those down and
varnished them, and we use those for
table tops now," he says.
* Create ambiance in tight
quarters with light and sound. Jeff

Pond is former owner of A4 Pizza,

3 2 / P I Z Z AT O D AY. C O M / J U N E 2 0 1 6

a 1,200-square-foot restaurant in
Somerville, Massachusetts. He had to
shutter A4 due to an August 2015 fire.
But one thing he learned about
interior design from the A4 experience
is that soft lighting provided depth to
the dining experience.
"Our kitchen was in the same
room. We had a wood fired oven that
centered the room, and it was the only
prep and cooking area. You came in,
and it was wide open, and you saw
everything that was happening. The
ambience was warm by nature," he
says.
Pond has bounced back and is
constructing two new restaurants,
scheduled to open in September and
October. But he misses his cozy space
at A4.
"The upside to the small space is that
the energy is fantastic," he says. "You
get just 10 to 12 people in the room,
the energy changes. If you put them in
a 200-seat restaurant, it's different."
Noise definitely plays into ambience, Sundstad agrees. Keep in mind
that hard surfaces add to the acoustics
of a small space. If you want diners
to linger, incorporate textiles and soft
background music.
"The core question to all of these
elements is, how long do you want customers to stay? Or do you want them
to get their stuff and get out? What are
you encouraging them to do? If you do
a high volume business, it's less about
sit-down service," he says.
* Stick with simple and savory.

When Sundstad designed the express
stores for Starbucks, his team pared
down product offerings so that baristas
could efficiently serve the most popular
drinks in a tiny space. "We'd get the
20 different syrups and choose the top
six that people use and decided what
we could offer. For example, we knew
we couldn't do blended drinks but
other things," he says.
Similarly, apply the "keep it simple"
rule to your pizzeria.
"The only thing we cook is the piz-

za," Grim says. "We have no kitchen
or hood or fryer, or any of that stuff.
We have a salad station. Anything that
needs to be cooked, we cook in the
oven. There's no stove. Just the pizza." n
HEIDI LYNN RUSSELL specializes in
writing about the issues that affect
small business owners. She is a regular
contributor to Pizza Today and lives in
Lexington, Kentucky.

Fun Waiting
in a Small Space
At tiny Nomad's on a busy night, owner
Tom Grim ensures the time passes as
quickly as possible. "We have a beautiful
garden area, and people hang out and drink
wine. They bring their own wine (in New
Jersey, any restaurant can do that), and
people love it," he says.
Grim also uses an app service called
Nowait, a text message waitlist system.
"People leave their number, walk around,
and Nowait texts them when their table's
ready," he says.
In a pinch, chalkboards also work for
waits at small restaurants, says Jeff Pond,
former owner of A4.
"We took a pillar in the front area, made
a chalkboard and had a running wait list.
We didn't take reservations and only sat
36 people. You could see how far along you
were on the list," he says.
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