Designs by Frank Wagner FCSI: Left: Dining counter at KaDeWe Below: The Ritz-Carlton, both in Berlin


the envelope to create better operations and experience,” says Schwartz.


TECHNOLOGY DRIVING CHANGE Technology is among the most obvious changes for designers. Consultants have moved away from photocopying pages to collect into cutbooks and documents have moved online; Revit has replaced trace paper and the introduction of BIM has made the work more efficient and smoother. “In the early days when we still did


Beyond these essential tasks of serving


the client with the best product and service, does the design job aspire to affect positive change? For Ken Schwartz FCSI, president of SSA, Inc., there is little doubt. “Aspects of good design can result in change and I think there is an unwritten but absolute responsibility of designers to create responsibly. Everything we design has a ripple effect and those effects can either be a catalyst for positive change or a catalyst for perpetuating the status quo,” he says. “I invite and challenge others to be creative, step out of their comfort zone and design out of the box. Tis is how new ideas are born and evolve.” Even if you are not changing the world


on a large scale, the impact on clients is significant. Te design consultant can be considered the steward of a project, guiding the client to the very best solution for their needs. For operators who have not previously worked with a consultant it is an eye-opener. Pierre Issa, founder of the NGO


Arenciel in Lebanon engaged Roger Obeid FCSI to oversee a large foodservice project at a traditional Lebanese restaurant Al Khan


al Makssoud, seating 800 diners, in the Bekaa Valley. “Roger added so much value. We wouldn’t


have done it without him. If I wanted to do another restaurant, we couldn’t imagine doing another one without consulting someone like Roger,” he says. We used to rely on individual tradesmen; the architect, the engineer and so on, but the way the consultant ties it all together is invaluable.” To continue to do that work, standing


still is not an option, whether you are an operator competing with new concepts and trends, a manufacturer staying one step ahead of the industry or a consultant winning and keeping clients under the pressure of delivering improved designs that maximize the bottom line, care for the environment and ultimately appeal to the end-user. Evolving technology, improved


materials and not least constantly developing legislation are all elements that drive this need to be agile and innovative. “I am often perplexed why most


consultants continue to do the same thing over and over with very little change to design or approach, imagination or pushing


manual drafting and typing, everything had to be mailed or sent with a courier,” says Jim Petersen FCSI, president of C.i.i Food Service Design, adding that advances in communication have introduced a nuances picture. “Te ease of communication today has created this presumption of instant availability and response.” Bill Caruso FFCSI, president of CS


Enterprises, echoes his thoughts. “It used to take us months to do things that could take us weeks today, but today clients often have unrealistic expectations. People have these misconceptions that things just pop out, which they don’t,” he says. If you ask any foodservice design consultant today how technology has changed what we do, the extent of pressures put on us by the developers, owners – the guys who pay us – is a key component.” Of course, the positive flipside of


technological improvements, as Petersen points out, the long journeys for short meetings are in the past. “Now I rarely have to travel to a face-to-face meeting,” he says. Te arrival of the internet in the 1990s,


of course, changed everything. As Frank Wagner FCSI, managing partner of K-Drei consultancy in Germany and chairman of FCSI EAME, says, before this milestone, information gathering, and exchange was the main challenge. “We needed to get information on the right products and the newest technologies without the internet – manufacturers needed to find you and you needed to know they existed,” he says.


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