Los Olmos Dos
Luisa the cook, the owner and the soul of Los Olmos Dos, needed a luxury cuisine to be able to improve her well known recipes. After many years of good cooking and an increasing list of clients, the family organization behind the restaurant decided to upgrade not only the kitchen but also the general look of the restaurant.
Los Olmos Dos is a well-known and popular restaurant of Sant Adrià de Besòs, an urban town in the outskirts of Barcelona, an area with strong roots for its traditionally working class neighbors. People path through and say hello on their way to the towns’ central market. Its position in the core area of the town represents an opportunity to improve the restaurant visibility, taking advantage of the busy street where it is located.
But above all, the restaurant renovations first objective was to increase the number of seats, something that the project did in 30%. Versed on lunch menus (menú del mediodía), the restaurants’ success is linked to the provision of a fast service and the maximization of the menus served. The project strategy was to create differentiated areas introducing high tables for fast service and a big table next to the street to welcome customers, further from reorganizing the main room to make it work more efficient.
The image of the restaurant was renovated and updated, providing more relevance to the kitchen, the area Luisa commands. The original structure of the restaurant was modified favoring the entrance and the contact with the street. The dining/lunch room was divided in areas, which were made recognizable by the height, materials, and colors. However, with a high part of the investment seized by the equipment, the spending on furniture and interior was restricted and solutions had to be adapted to the budget and the short time available for construction. To match with the period of the restaurants period of lower demand, works were done in just one month, matching with summer holidays, the time that traditionally the restaurant remains closed anyway.
The Studios duty was to provide a comfortable place for daily customers at the same time as making it a workplace that makes everyday management and maintenance easy for the employees. Materials like white marble and color tiles kept the traditional layout of local restaurants while wood and steal introduced new shapes and textures in the space. It was also possible to work in the graphic design of the brand, defining the restaurants logo and the rest of the communication features, from menus to tables numbering.
At last, although planned otherwise, the renovation of the façade was restricted to carpentries as the building owners disagreed on the improvement. But despite this, today, the new openable carpentry has redefined and facilitated the relations between pedestrians and the restaurant.
