Top 10 Restaurant Architects
Restaurants are one of the riskier, yet highly profitable businesses to be in these days. To be the real estate partner of a restaurant is a solid investment as even if the space has quick turnover, there is sure to be another tenant who has ambition to be a successful food service operator. Thus, retail spaces that come with all the commercial kitchen FF&E have more demand than supply. For example, I helped a client list a commercial kitchen and I got over 20 expressions of interest within the first day. There are many potential groups of tenants: coffee shops, cafes, restaurants, catering companies, food preperation companies, etc.
Yet, if one wants to lease out a space for restaurant usage, especially for high-end ones, there usually is a lot of tenant improvements or build-to-suits that need to be done. And for those to be done successfully, one must enlist the talents of a skilled architecture firm with good solid work in the restaurant field. Recently, I have been reading Commercial Construction News and they have listed the following as the top 10 restaurant architects, in terms of billings:
10th… EDG Interior Architecture + Design
9th… Cuningham Group Architecture
8th… Stantec Architecture
7th… CASCO Diversified
6th… CMA
5th… Cubellis
4th… Chipman Adams Architects
3rd… Greenberg Farrow
2nd… Leo A Daly
1st… WD Partners
Overall, for your retail property, having a food related tenant is a good component of the tenant mix and keeps your pool of tenants diversified, so that if one market segment fails you are still covered. And as an owner of the property, especially large scale shopping centers and other retail properties, it is essential to have design and construction standards that are consistent with the value of your property.
