How many m² per cover in the dining room?
The dining room is sized per cover, not by raw floor area. A bistro or brasserie works on 1 to 1.5 m² per cover; a fine-dining restaurant needs 1.5 to 2 m², because tables sit further apart and the service is more generous. A café or a high-turnover spot drops towards 1 m².
These figures cover the seat and the passage around it. They follow a simple rule: the higher the experience, the more air you need between guests. Packing tables in wins covers on paper, but costs comfort and image.
The kitchen: a separate area to size
The kitchen is worked out on its own, around 0.5 to 0.75 m² per cover, with storage on top. A 50-cover restaurant therefore needs a kitchen of at least 20 m² for a smooth service.
Inside the kitchen, the proportions matter as much as the area: roughly 40% for prep and cooking, 30% for storage, 20% for the wash-up, 10% for movement. A plan that holds those shares keeps stations from clashing at the peak of service.
Splitting dining room and kitchen
Across a restaurant's total area, the dining room takes the larger share: it is common to give around 60% of the space to customers and the rest to the kitchen, storage and back-of-house. The right split depends on the kitchen type and the menu, but keeping the dining room dominant protects seating capacity, and so the takings.
That trade-off is what we set on the first visit: what the space can actually serve, and how to hold that cover count without sacrificing circulation or storage.
The open kitchen: a safety rule to know
An open kitchen onto the dining room is in high demand, but it is regulated. Article GC 9 of the ERP fire-safety rules requires, for a large open kitchen, a fixed vertical screen between the kitchen and the dining room.
That screen has to stay stable in fire for at least fifteen minutes (E 15-S), be built in a material rated M1 or A2-s1, d1, meet the ceiling, and drop at least 0.50 m below the kitchen's finished ceiling. You build it in at the design stage, or bringing it up to code later costs dearly.
Why size before you draw
A space is worth not its floor area but the number of covers it can serve well. Setting these ratios up front avoids two common mistakes: aiming for too many seats and choking the room, or under-using a space that could have held more.
We start there, then draw the fit-out, the kitchen and the furniture around that number. It is safer than placing tables and hoping the kitchen keeps up.
