Reverse engineering F&B experience design

F&B spaces at most events are designed for one thing: feeding people efficiently.

Rows of high tables. Buffet stations against walls. Seating that faces outward into a corridor. The layout says: eat quickly, then go back to the programme.

But 58% of attendees say networking is their primary reason for being there. And some of the most valuable conversations at any event happen over coffee, not during a keynote. The F&B space is not a break from the experience. For many delegates, it is the experience.

The difference between a space that facilitates conversation and one that doesn't often comes down to furniture design. Circular tables seat six people who can all see and engage with other, versus long benches that seat ten or more people who can only really speak to the two either side of them. Lounge seating with low tables creates a different energy: slower, more relaxed, better equipped for the conversations that need ten minutes rather than two.

This is community building in its most physical form. The spatial decisions made about where people eat and how they're seated directly shape who talks to whom, for how long and about what. Get it right and the F&B space becomes the most productive networking environment in the venue. Get it wrong and it's a vacuum with canapés battling the pressure of the clock.

When you’re planning an experience, look at the F&B layout last, not first. After you've decided what kind of conversations you want to happen, that need to happen, design the space around them.