Four layout statesand what each one costs

01FixedDecided before any layout is

The bar run occupies one long wall with the cellar drop behind it, so the service side of the room is settled before anything else is. The booth sits in the opposite corner, away from the entrance, so a queue never forms across the sightline. Two structural columns stand in the middle third of the floor. They cannot move, and they break any layout that assumes a clear span.

Three more things are fixed by fire routes rather than by the fit-out: the width of the gangway from the furthest point of the floor to the nearest exit, the clear space in front of each exit door, and the rule that no layout state puts furniture, cable or stock in either of them. A layout that closes a route is not a tighter layout. It is a different and smaller room.

02StandingFloor clear, rail on the column line

Standing is the room at its loosest: tables struck and stacked in the store, the floor clear from booth to bar, a rail along the column line and nothing in the middle. It carries the highest number of the four states, because standing occupancy needs the least floor per person. It is also the state in which the exits rather than the floor are most likely to be the binding constraint, which is worth knowing before anyone decides a bigger room would help.

03MixedLow seating to the short walls

Mixed keeps the rail and adds low seating along the two short walls, leaving the centre standing. It is the state for a night that runs long, because people who can sit down stay longer than people who cannot. It costs floor: seating takes more area per person than standing does, so the number drops, and the drop is the point of working it out rather than guessing.

04SeatedCabaret, gangways past the columns

Seated puts tables across the floor in a cabaret pattern with gangways between them. It carries the lowest number of the four states and generates the most paperwork, because the table plan becomes part of the layout and has to be walked, photographed and kept with the night’s records. The columns decide the pattern: tables are set to leave a straight run past them rather than a route that bends twice, since a route that bends twice is a route nobody uses in a hurry.

05LoungeSeated, with the booth dark

Lounge is the seated state without the dancefloor: booth dark, low seating pulled in around the columns, the bar as the focus. Its number sits close to the seated figure. It is the quietest state the room has, so it is the one in which the rig and the limiter matter least, and it is the slowest of the four to strike because low seating does not stack.

06ChangeoverA job with a start time

A changeover is a job with a start time, not something that happens around open doors. Tables are struck to the store rather than pushed against the walls, because furniture against a wall is usually furniture in front of an exit. The floor is swept between the strike and the set, since that is the only point in the night when the whole floor is reachable.

• Strike to the store, never to the walls.
• Re-walk every exit route after the set, not before it.
• Amend the door brief in writing if the new state changes the number.
• Photograph the final set and keep it with the night’s paperwork.

The duty manager signs the changeover off. Until that signature exists the room is in neither state, and the door stays shut.