“Standing tableside with the guests, the conversation is contained while still hearing the buzz of the restaurant.”
– Christopher McFadden, General Manager, Piva Restaurant
Imagine going out for dinner only to spend the night yelling at the person across from you. Would you come back?
How Acoustics Influence Restaurant Customer Behaviour
According to the American Council on Society and Health, in 2024, noise was the second most common complaint, with average noise levels ranging from those making it difficult to hold conversations to levels that cause long-term hearing damage for staff. In another survey by Zagat, excessive restaurant noise topped the list of complaints. Additional research reveals customers who find it hard to communicate effectively with each other and servers also spend up to 25 percent less.
Noisy dining areas with little to no acoustic treatment can negatively impact restaurant ambience and customer experience. The drawbacks don’t end there. Excessive noise can also affect staff efficiency, employee retention, and your overall bottom line and business.
Primacoustic’s sound control solutions reduce background noise, improve clarity for conversation, and enhance the overall dining experience. They may also be customized to blend seamlessly with your atmosphere and décor, be it cutting-edge current, rustic, formal, or casual.
Loud restaurants Don’t Just Hurt conversation—They Drive Away Customers
While busy restaurants can be attractive to diners, loud restaurants actually encourage faster turnover. Put bluntly, there’s a fine line between a bustling atmosphere and one that’s uncomfortably loud. The bottom line is that poor acoustics costs you – discouraging older diners, families, business professionals, and other customers from returning – perhaps causing them to leave before even being seated in the first place and limiting your restaurant’s appeal overall.
On average, a typical conversation registers at approximately 60 dB. According to several studies, staff and diners are often subjected to sound levels of 75 dB and, at peak times, up to almost 90 dB – roughly the volume of a lawnmower.
What Causes Poor Acoustics in Restaurants?
Studies show that year-to-year restaurants are becoming noisier. As the volume has ramped up, so have negative reviews citing noise as a primary source of customer dissatisfaction. An ongoing trend toward open kitchens and chic, industrial designs with hard, sound-reflecting materials has exacerbated the issue.
High ceilings that reflect sound against tables, countertops, windows, and hard surfaces such as gypsum, concrete, glass, tile, and metal offer virtually no absorptive qualities, allowing ambient noise (voices, music, kitchen noise, etc.) to bounce or reverberate around the room creating a cacophony that makes it almost impossible to communicate effectively – and certainly comfortably. Beyond speech intelligibility, excessive noise in a restaurant detracts from the atmosphere you intended to create.
Excessive noise is also problematic for your staff. Spending significant time in a loud environment is fatiguing, stressful, and lowers morale.
Great Food Deserves a Great Atmosphere.
It’s simple: excessively loud restaurants mean diners struggle to hear conversations and get frustrated quickly. Noise increases stress in both customers and staff. And, when servers struggle to hear diner’s orders, they’re more likely to make mistakes.
By contrast, comfortable sound levels can increase revenue, encouraging longer stays, repeat customers, and a broader demographic, in general, throughout the day.
Restaurant owners spend thousands on interior design but often ignore sound. Even though investing in acoustic treatments is a proven means of reducing unwanted noise and a one-time investment that betters customer retention and increases revenue.
Just like too much or too little of an ingredient can ruin a dish, excessive noise and the lack of proper acoustical treatment can ruin the overall dining experience. Fixing the problem isn’t about creating a hushed environment. It’s about eliminating harsh, distracting noise so the key ingredients to any restaurant meal – fine food, music, and conversation – can be enjoyed in equal measure.
The Solution: How Acoustic Treatment Transforms a Restaurant
The solution is reducing the amount of sound that bounces around the room with acoustic panels. Applying them to even 15% to 20% of your total wall surface area results in a drastic improvement in speech intelligibility. Whether mounted on walls or ceilings, they absorb excess sound energy, decreasing echoes and background noise and making it easier to have conversations.
Acoustic treatments can also be suspended from ceilings, installed as T-bar ceiling grids, or installed using any combination of our wide range of solutions – all of which are rigorously tested to ensure they meet fire and burn requirements, safety standards, and building codes.
Check Out Primacoustic’s Expansive Menu of Acoustic Treatments
At Primacoustic, our goal is to help you make any space sound great. Our sound control solutions are an easy, highly flexible, and cost-effective means to enhance your restaurant aesthetically and acoustically. They also include eco-friendly and Slatwall treatments, as well as fully customizable options that allow you to seamlessly incorporate logos, branding, or virtually anything you can imagine.
Our dedicated customer service and technical support teams are here for you, ready to answer any questions, identify the best acoustic solutions for your needs, and help you find dealer partners to aid with installation.
For more information, visit Primacoustic.com to download our Whitepaper on restaurant acoustics and to see how our solutions have helped other restaurants solve noise issues. Or contact us directly to find out how we can help you transform your restaurant into a space that sounds – and looks – as great as your food tastes.
