The Importance of Anthropometry for Ergonomic Restaurant Design

Human being has always been in struggle with environment and environmental conditions experienced until the first appearance on earth. As long as he/she has complied with the environmental conditions as well as made use of raw materials in environment, life has become easier and eventually the life quality has gradually increased. The major facts on the improvement of life quality are knowledge, experience and technological level gained by human being through time. Due to the facts that the number of working woman has been steadily rising at present and the working places of employees are commonly far in distance, as well as due to the variation of eating form and habits, duration of eating and economic conditions, large variety of restaurants are opened. The quality of restaurant employees and customer satisfaction lead to an increase in the reliability of restaurant along with a growth in economic gain. A restaurant design in accordance with ergonomic design and criterion is a must for restaurant employees and customer satisfaction. The most important fact among ergonomic design and criterion that cannot be ignored is the anthropometry method. A design without considering the anthropometric measures of employees and customers may give rise to dissatisfaction as well as morphological, anatomical, physiological and even mental tension. A restaurant design should be performed by a design team of experts in view of restaurant location, land position, environmental conditions, customer profile, restaurant type and customer capacity, and more importantly the anthropometric measures of employees and customers. Pick up, storage, cooking, delivery settings of restaurants should be taken into consideration in design, and the dining place should be wellplanned and clean. Additionally, restaurant should look pleasing and the color, ventilation and lighting of restaurant, besides the height of ceiling, table dimensions, spacing between tables, corridors and all reinforcement elements should be organized with respect to anthropometric characteristics of users. At present, it is obviously impossible to propose an ideal restaurant design to respond all restaurant demands because of the variation of environmental conditions, diversity of restaurants and customer profile. Despite these difficulties, it is probable to perform a restaurant design in desired type and form by means of ergonomic design and criterion provided that the restaurant is designed and constructed by a specialized, knowledgeable and creative team for the sake of the health, security and productivity of staff. It can be stated that the rules and methodologies of restaurant design are similar irrespective of type and size of restaurant