Vastu for a Retail Unit or a Restaurant
Vastu for a retail unit or a restaurant
Retail and hospitality get almost no serious Vastu writing, which is odd given how specific the questions are and how few of them there are.
A shop has an entrance, a till, a stock area and a customer area. A restaurant adds a kitchen and seating. That is the whole problem, and it means a reading here is unusually concrete.
The entrance
The single most weighted thing in the unit, and usually the one you cannot move.
Preferred: north or east facing, wide, well lit, and clear.
What matters more than the direction: that it is unobstructed. A doorway with an A-board, a bin, a stack of baskets and a dump bin inside it is a fault in any system, and it is a fault we find in most units we read.
If your entrance faces south or west, you are not in trouble — a great many successful units do. What you do about it:
- Light it more than you think it needs. A south-facing entrance in a British winter is dim from three in the afternoon.
- Keep the threshold physically clear, inside and out.
- Make the first two metres inside the door open, not merchandised. The instinct to put a display immediately inside the door is strong and it is the wrong instinct for both Vastu and retail.
The till
Where: the south-east is the conventional position for cash handling, with the south-west as the second choice.
Facing: the operator should face north or east, and should be able to see the door without turning. That second point is security as much as tradition.
Not: in the north-east, which wants to stay open and light, and not directly facing the entrance where the queue blocks the threshold.
The weight point. A till position needs a solid back — a wall, a column, a substantial counter — not an open floor behind the operator. This is the commercial version of the desk rule, and it is the one piece of commercial Vastu that every retailer recognises immediately.
Stock, and the back of house
Heavy stock belongs in the south-west. That is the zone that wants mass, and a stockroom is the heaviest thing in the unit.
The failure we find constantly: stock pushed into whatever corner is left, which in a narrow unit is usually the back — and if the back of the unit happens to be the north-east, the heaviest, darkest, most cluttered function in the business has landed in the zone that most wants the opposite.
If that is your layout and you cannot change it, the mitigation is the same as everywhere: light it, keep the aisle through it clear, and do not let it spread.
Restaurants: the kitchen
The kitchen is the fire, and the fire belongs in the south-east.
In a leased unit the kitchen is where the extraction and the gas were run, and that is that. So the work is inside the kitchen rather than about where it sits:
- Separate the hob run from the sink run as far as the space allows. Fire and water adjacent is the fault the system objects to most inside a kitchen, and commercial galley layouts produce it by default.
- The hob should be on the south-east side of the kitchen wherever there is a choice, with the chef facing east.
- Cold storage in the north or north-west. Water and air zones.
- Extraction that works and is used. Stagnant cooking air is a fault in every tradition and in environmental health too.
If the kitchen is in the north or north-east — fire in a water zone — treat it as a zone you are managing. Keep the rest of that zone clear, do not add further heat to it, and make sure the ventilation is better than the minimum.
Restaurants: the seating
| Area | Zone | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Waiting and greeting | North, east | The connective, open half. Where people arrive |
| Main covers | Centre and east | Movement and light |
| The quiet tables | South-west | Enclosure. The tables people request for a long dinner |
| Bar or counter | South-east, south | Warmth and activity |
| Toilets | Wherever the plumbing is | Keep them clean and keep the route to them clear of the dining area |
The one worth acting on: the south-west corner is your best table. Enclosed, quiet, backed by solid walls, furthest from the door. Restaurants that charge for a table should charge for that one, and most of them have put the service station there instead.
What to do in the first week of a lease
If you are fitting out a unit now, this is the order that costs least:
- Take the bearing from above, before anything is installed. The free Direction Finder does it from a satellite image.
- Mark the zones on the fit-out plan. Five minutes with a printout.
- Place the till and the stock according to the zones, while they are still lines on a drawing rather than fixed counters.
- Keep the north-east corner out of the stock plan. Whatever it becomes, it should not become the overflow.
- Then fit out.
Doing this before the fit-out costs nothing. Doing it afterwards costs a joiner.
If the last business in the unit failed
That is a specific situation with its own answer, and it comes up often enough that it has its own post: taking over a unit where the last business failed.
The short version: look at the ordinary explanations first — footfall, rent, visibility, the tenancy terms — before anything else. Then read the layout.
Commercial Vastu remediation — for offices, clinics, retail and hospitality. Phased so that almost everything happens out of hours and the business keeps trading.