Types of restaurants: a guide to restaurant models and concepts

Buffet

Buffet restaurants offer an all-you-can-eat, self-service model where diners can choose from a variety of food options. These are common in hospitality industries like hotels, casinos, and conference centers.

For customers, buffets offer the benefit of simple pricing (a flat fee for each person), the ability to try multiple dishes in one sitting, and the luxury of eating as much as you want. For restaurant owners, they can reduce labor and inventory challenges. There’s less need for table service, since diners serve themselves. And the kitchen makes the same dishes in similar quantities each day, rather than making each individual meal to order.

Buffets were a restaurant model severely affected by the pandemic, causing some people to predict their demise. However, they’ve shown surprising staying power. Many buffet-style restaurants are still profitable.

The model does come with a few main considerations to keep in mind, particularly:

• Sanitation concerns. With many customers accessing the same food dishes with the same serving utensils, buffets face a bigger challenge with maintaining sanitation than most restaurants.

• Food safety. Buffets must take special care to ensure that all foods are kept at the right temperatures to stay safe to eat when left out for long periods.

• Food waste. Making large quantities of each dish to put out can lead to more food waste, especially if you’re miscalculating the portion sizes for each guest.

• Pricing. Finding the right price point to keep buffets profitable can be tricky. You have to account for customers with big appetites who are out to get their money’s worth.

Drive-through and pickup

Restaurant drive-throughs work by letting customers review a menu posted outside the restaurant, place their order through a microphone, then pick it up at a window when it’s ready—all without leaving their car. For pickup orders, sometimes called takeout, customers can place an order online or over the phone, then show up to get it a few minutes later. Some restaurants take pickup orders out to customers in their car, and some offer a designated pickup area to make sure the process is fast and easy for customers.

Sometimes customers are in a hurry or simply not in the mood for the dine-in experience, which makes drive-through and pickup options a popular restaurant model. These choices are frequently offered in combination with another restaurant model. Drive-throughs are popular at fast-food restaurants, which usually provide space for customers who want to eat there as well. And pickup orders are a common option at many restaurants that offer table and counter service.

Food truck and pop-up restaurant

Food trucks run a commercial kitchen out of a vehicle and serve food to customers from the truck window. Food trucks can move locations to serve different customer bases over time.

Pop-up restaurants are temporary and work out of a borrowed location for a limited period. They can be located in an existing restaurant location on a day it’s usually closed, a chef’s house, an arcade, an outdoor market—anywhere it can get permission to set up shop.

Food trucks and pop-up restaurants are restaurant models that let you skip much of the expense of commercial real estate. Both options can function with fewer employees than traditional restaurant models require. That vastly reduces the overhead costs for starting and running a restaurant. These are popular options for entrepreneurs new to the restaurant industry or for chefs wanting to test a restaurant concept before making a bigger investment.

Delivery-only

This relatively new restaurant model has gained popularity since the early days of the pandemic. Delivery-only restaurants don’t offer any space for dining in, instead exclusively serving customers who want food delivered.

Delivery-only restaurant models take 2 main forms:

• Virtual restaurants. These restaurants use the kitchen space of an existing brick-and-mortar restaurant location but sell food under a distinct brand. An existing restaurant can use a virtual restaurant to increase its profit potential by serving new customers or expanding the dayparts they serve without substantially increasing costs.

• Ghost kitchens. These restaurants work out of a commercial kitchen space that exists exclusively for pickup and delivery orders, meaning customers aren’t provided a space to sit down and eat. Ghost kitchens often use shared commercial kitchen spaces that create food for multiple brands in one location.

Both of these options have the benefit of much lower overhead costs. The main downside of the delivery-only model is that you lose out on any potential customers who prefer the dine-in experience. Plus, marketing your restaurant and building a brand around it can be challenging. Often, restaurants that use a delivery-only model find most (if not all) of their customers through third-party delivery platforms like Uber Eats. The ability to tap into a large customer base through one main app can simplify your marketing strategy, while the lower operating costs involved can net meaningful profits.