The café culture is a booming trend, with fashionable new cafes popping up on almost every corner. New café clients want to provide their customers with more than just a bite to eat, they want to create the perfect ambience to keep them coming back, and this can be done through clever design and fit out.

The current design trend in Melbourne cafés seems to be exposed brick facades, high ceilings, hardwood floors, communal tables and open style kitchens. The purpose of this open space design is to give customers a sense of belonging and to make them feel like they are part of the whole experience, not just eating at a sterile café.

With these larger spaces, it’s vitally important to consider acoustics within your design. The combination of customers talking at the same time, staff walking around, people opening the front door, the coffee grinder and not to mention the kitchen staff banging their pots and pans, all create reverberation. If these are not absorbed with the correct acoustic panel solution, then the ambience that you worked so hard to design, may not be fulfilled once it is built.