Enjoying a delicious meal at a restaurant is an intense, stimulating treat for all five senses. Indeed, food is often celebrated for its taste, but also for its aesthetic presentation, which enriches and enhances the perception of quality. However, there is a tendency to underestimate the importance of smell in the culinary experience; but the fact is, scent plays a crucial role in shaping our perceptions and determining how much we enjoy the food we eat.
Besides enhancing the naturally emitted fragrances from dishes, the power of olfactory marketing can now be employed to create restaurant fragrances; the idea is to transform every meal into an all-round gastronomic experience, capable of actively engaging the senses in a subtle balance game.
Through a handpicked selection of scent notes, we can influence customers’ perceptions and guide them through the entire tasting experience: from enticing scents which prepare the palate for tasting, to aromatic notes that blend with the flavours of the dish itself, fragrance can be used strategically to stimulate a symphony of the senses and create memorable moments within Food & Beverage spaces.
What role do fragrances play in the Food & Beverage sector?
The lead players of the Hospitality-Restaurant-Café sector have the opportunity to introduce new experiments within their environments, adding a well-constructed olfactory personality to their brand identity. Leveraging olfactory marketing means considering each fragrance as an opportunity to create emotional connections with guests and expand the simple act of eating into a moment of exciting multisensory satisfaction.
The secret is to consider both spaces and food as offerings that go well beyond the stimulation of taste, leading to sources of emotion, connection, and relationship. Using appropriate fragrances in the design of restaurant environments allows you to captivate the unconscious mind of diners, engaging with their emotional sphere rather than just their taste buds. Gourmet aromas, specially studied fragrances, and scents can enhance the perceptions you wish to emphasize while also creating unexpected ones and increasing the overall attractiveness of your brand.
The fragrances chosen for restaurants, bars, cafes, and other venues must accurately reflect every brand’s distinctive identity and elegantly convey the atmosphere it aims to offer guests. So, when it comes to identifying which exclusive fragrance you’d like to have wafting through your F&B spaces, it’s essential to focus on tangible elements such as the dishes you serve, their ingredients, the preferences of your target market, and your brand personality, to transform all of this into intangible clouds of fragrance to diffuse through the air.
Another thing to consider is that all of your brand’s sensory elements can influence your clientele’s purchasing preferences and consumer choices. For example, it can persuade them to consume more products, taste specific menu items, or make purchases through up-selling or cross-selling (in each scenario, raising the average transaction value). A pleasant fragrance also makes guests want to spend longer in your establishment, which clearly improves their level of satisfaction with the experience and, again, affects purchases.
Moreover, scenting your F&B spaces, when done well, can build lasting associations in visitors’ memories. Once they have left your restaurant, they’ll be enticed to return and relive the experience of the reassuring, familiar notes they associate with it.
What key features must a fragrance for restaurants have?
The scent identity you choose for your environment should always start from the essential characteristics of your brand identity. It should evoke the same sensations, perceptions you wish to convey, and the values that have been able to create a sense of belonging among your loyal audience.
As one might imagine, fragrances for restaurants must be subtle enough not to overpower the aromas and flavours of the dishes you serve. Instead, they must complement the food, while highlighting the exclusive quality of the food and wine selection. That’s why restaurant fragrances tend to lean heavily on various gourmand ingredients, which are already spontaneously associated with food experiences through scent memory. In these accords, you’ll often find foody notes from ingredients such as vanilla, coffee, liquorice, chocolate, pepper, coconut, and so on.
Another point to remember is that creating sensory landscapes for a F&B interior means taking a holistic view of the entire experience, so as to orchestrate all the inputs that greet customers when they step through the door. Meanwhile, the strength and persistence of the scents must be adapted to the different areas, such as the reception, the dining room, the cloakroom, the toilets, the outdoor areas and so on. A dynamically designed scentscape makes the most of the subtle, invisible emotional stimuli you want your guests to perceive.
More than fragrances: the Scent Company service
As olfactory marketing specialists, the experts at Scent Company are constantly researching the subconscious, unexplored areas of the mind, along with innovative communication strategies. Our job is to take you through a personalised journey in order to communicate your brand identity through a unique scent. Together, we can make your food and beverage spaces true havens for the senses, places where people come to experience a multi-sensory escape.
We work with Master Perfumers and Fragrance Specialists for our olfactory branding projects. They start with an in-depth analysis of your brand’s distinctive characteristics, your vision and the objectives you want to achieve through your scent marketing strategy. Then, it’s over to the top “noses” in the business, who will concentrate every detail into tiny drops of perfume.
Our Grasse laboratory is where we produce your chosen fragrance for your F&B location. Scent production involves several stages, from checking the raw materials, to preparing the perfume bases, through to maceration and validation of the finishing product. All of this helps us achieve the perfect scent for your restaurant.
A successful olfactory strategy also means choosing the best scent diffusers for restaurants. These are professional systems that are designed to create specific, long-lasting, effective scentscapes. There are various professional diffusion technologies, ranging from those connected to your HVAC systems, to visible or concealed installations.
Our support for your sensory strategy doesn’t stop there. To ensure continuity, we use leading-edge remote control technologies and a wide network of technicians across Italy and the world. These two elements work in tandem to monitor your diffusers at work, and schedule refills and maintenance, so that every component of your olfactory communication system runs smoothly.
To take your strategy even further, consider the potential of our tailormade scented collections: these are small objects, accessories and products scented with the same fragrance that identifies your restaurant. It could comprise guest soaps or scented wipes to place in the restrooms, or scented candles or rattan diffusors to put the finishing touch to your olfactory architecture. Other options include fabric sprays, home fragrances or other items for guests to take home as a souvenir of the experience.
Are you curious to find out which fragrance could represent the atmosphere of your Food & Beverage project? Contact us to book a one-to-one consultation!
