How to Safely Serve Nashville Tourists While Repainting Your Restaurant's Interior
Nashville, Tennessee is primarily known for its music culture, but the city’s various food offerings constitute another claim of fame. Every summer, tourists from all over visit Nashville and surrounding areas to imbibe in the region’s rich history, lively concerts, and delicious dining. And now that the country is finally getting back on its feet after a difficult year, Nashville is bound to experience an upcoming tourist season like no other. If you own or manage a restaurant in Nashville, TN, the onslaught of vacation-goers is both exciting and stressful, especially when managing any lingering restrictions. You want to make sure you’re prepared to handle an increase in customers without sacrificing high-quality customer service. Moreover, it’s crucial to stay ahead of the competition and entice customers to visit your establishment over others. As the tourist season fast approaches, then, you might decide to re-paint your restaurant’s interior.
A freshly painted interior can enhance employee morale, boost your reputation, and increase your property’s value. That said, finding the right time to paint your restaurant is no small feat, especially if you can’t afford to temporarily shut down. Preparing food in the same area as an active painting zone is a recipe for disaster, not to mention a violation of health and safety codes. If nothing else, the smell of wet/fresh paint isn’t exactly appetizing and may turn customers away. So, you may find yourself in a pickle: you need to invest in interior commercial painting for the sake of your business, but you also need to do it in a way that doesn’t interfere with your business. Let’s discuss how you can safely serve Nashville tourists while repainting your restaurant’s interior this season.
Paint Your Restaurant’s Interior Prior to the Busy Season
The safest way to re-paint your restaurant to properly serve your customers is to get it done before tourist season kicks into full gear. This way, the influx of diners will be able to enter your facility in its freshest form without encountering any of the “new paint smell” or signs of active renovation. Of course, painting your restaurant’s interior before its busiest period can be challenging in its own right. After all, you still need to operate outside of tourist season, and Nashville, TN is almost always lively year-round. As such, it’s not merely important to paint your restaurant’s interior at the right time of year -- you must always consider the time of day you get it done, which brings us to our next point.
Schedule Commercial Interior Painting Services Strategically
Whether you manage to hire painting services prior to tourist season or during it, there’s only so much contractors can do during your business’ active hours. Even if your restaurant has plenty of space, painters should only get to work on the interior when customers are off the premises. If your place runs 24/7, this will present a problem, as you’ll have no choice but to reduce your hours to allow for proper interior painting. Otherwise, schedule your painting services according to your off times, whether that’s a selection of weekdays, weekends, and/or after closing for the day. The less interrupted the painting process, the better; if, for instance, your restaurant is closed three days in a row, use this continuous string of time to your advantage. In many cases, a complete interior repainting project can be done in this two- to three-day window, though some projects can take more or less time, depending. If you can’t manage an ongoing paint project like this, make sure all supplies and residue are cleaned up after every session so employees and customers don’t have to encounter a mess.
Work with Restaurant-Safe Paint Products
The paint you use for your restaurant interior is also essential for providing your customers with the safest and best possible dining experience. Ideally, you want to work with paints that contain few or zero volatile organic compounds (VOCs), chemicals that give off an unpleasant odor and pose various health risks to those inside. Applying low- or zero-VOC paint products is important in any commercial setting, but especially so in dining establishments where volume is high and people are actively consuming things. In addition to choosing low-VOC paints, you must also ensure that no paint ends up on food preparation equipment or food products themselves. Professional commercial painting contractors will take this aspect of their job seriously, removing and/or covering surfaces, features, and objects prior to painting and keeping food away from the work area at all times.
Post Relevant Signage if Necessary
Communication is key during any paint job. Accidents are much less likely to occur when everyone nearby is on the same page. One of the easiest and best ways to achieve this understanding is by posting signage outside and inside your restaurant to let employees and customers know that painting is taking place or has been recently completed. If certain areas still contain wet paint, make sure you clearly mark this so everyone knows not to touch or brush against these surfaces. Your painting provider should also keep you up to date on their progress as they work so you’re not met with any surprises along the way.
Paint with Both Practicality and Atmosphere in Mind
Painting a restaurant interior is often a multi-faceted project. Both the seating/dining area and the kitchen/preparation area must be accounted for and handled differently. For instance, you’ll want to go with more durable, glossy coatings for your kitchen walls, ceiling, and floors to more easily contend with stains, moisture, and so on. As for the front of the house, commercial painting should be more focused on creating a comfortable and memorable atmosphere -- flatter finishes tend to serve these areas well, allowing for softer lighting and less noticeable surface imperfections.
Hire Experienced and Reliable Commercial Painting Contractors
Ultimately, the best way to safely serve Nashville customers and tourists while repainting your restaurant’s interior is to hire an experienced painting company that’s committed to customer service and quality results. The best commercial painters will keep everything mentioned here in mind before, during, and after the project. Here at Nash Painting, for instance, we do our best to fit our clients’ schedule, make all necessary preparations, only work with high-quality and safe paint products, keep our customers in the loop at every stage of the process, and help with the color/finish selection process.
Tourist season is just about here. When it’s time to hire commercial painting experts near Nashville, Franklin, or Brentwood, TN to update your business, look no further than Nash Painting. To learn more about us, our services, and our values, call us at 615-829-6858 today!