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Construction Tips for Restaurant & Other Building Owners

The cost and availability of building materials can presently be described as highly unpredictable, so the pre-planning phase has become the key to Restaurant Construction more than ever before! We have strategies to share to get your restaurant or business operating quicker and generate income faster.

For any business type, a contractor should be evaluating your architectural plans to offer value engineering for possible savings and material availability. Value engineering is the practice of recommending a different, but acceptable application or material that makes a construction project more efficient. These changes are recommended to the restaurant owner and their architect for review and approval. Presently, the value engineering practice isn’t focused on cost savings, but its benefit is in suggesting another material that is available now, rather than waiting for months for the specified material to arrive. In the same vein, time savings can also be achieved by selecting materials that can be sourced locally, which results in lower delivery fees and quicker receipt of goods. Items that aren’t in stock right now are holding up projects and the list of long lead items is growing.

Additionally, as a general contractor, we self-perform trades including site work, concrete, rough and finish carpentry, and millwork. These trades help us control the pace of the work. Once permits are received, site work is typically the first activity for a new build, and for a remodel or build-out, first is demolition followed by carpentry in many circumstances. With our self-performed trades, we don’t need to wait around to get projects started and we can schedule our sub-contracted crews, appropriately.

Design-build speeds up the process. Wolgast is a design-builder, which means we have an architect on staff and can design and then build your restaurant construction projects. Recently, we had a unique situation with a client, an established franchise restaurateur. They wanted to open a new franchise concept in their market area, but the corporate design was too big for that market. We worked with the restaurant’s corporate officials and their architect to reduce the size of the building and it was approved. The client had already signed an agreement for multiple stores, so we provided a solution to make the concept work better for them.

Additionally, kiosks and technology are somewhat new to many restaurateurs. Freeing up labor through this automation is likely a benefit to any restaurant operation, so the kiosks are meant to get the online orders to their rightful owner with little disruption to waitstaff. Wolgast has been creating space for the technology and pick-up areas in existing stores, we can help you to implement yours too.

In closing, a quicker completion date saves money for clients, with shorter construction loan interest payments and the ability to generate income faster. If you need a solution to make your restaurant work better for you more quickly, please set up a meeting for us to review what we can do for you.

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