Studio Gascoigne is an Auckland-based interior and retail design studio that designs hospitality spaces (cafes, restaurants, bars and hotels), working across guest flow, seating layout, kitchen and service integration, and lighting to shape how a venue actually runs, not just how it photographs. The studio’s tagline is “design sells,” and in hospitality that’s a literal brief: every layout decision either helps a venue turn tables, hold guests longer, or move service smoothly, and it either helps or hurts the bottom line.
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The team is multi-disciplinary: registered architects, interior and retail designers, and technicians working under principal Mark Gascoigne, and the studio has picked up 170+ design awards across its project history. That range matters in hospitality specifically, because a restaurant fit-out sits at the intersection of architecture (fire egress, kitchen extraction, structural changes), interior design (materials, lighting, acoustics) and pure operations (how fast can a server get from pass to table four).
What Hospitality Interior Design Actually Involves
Hospitality design starts with guest flow: how someone moves from the street or the airport concourse to a table, how staff move between the kitchen and the floor without colliding, and where queues form at busy periods. Get this wrong and a venue feels chaotic no matter how good the finishes are.
Seating layout is where a lot of the commercial pressure sits. Booth seating holds groups longer and suits all-day dining; bar and counter seating turns over faster and suits quick-service formats; communal tables solve capacity problems in tight footprints. The studio has written a longer breakdown of this in its guide to cafe seating layout and guest experience, which goes into how seating choices change dwell time and revenue per square metre.
Kitchen and service integration is the part that rarely shows up in a mood board but decides whether a restaurant works on a Friday night. The pass needs sightlines to the floor, the service route needs to avoid crossing guest paths, and back-of-house storage needs to sit close enough to the line that staff aren’t running the length of the building mid-service. Atmosphere and lighting come last in the process but first in what a guest notices: layered lighting (ambient, task, accent), material choices that hold up to spill and steam, and acoustics that let a room feel lively without being loud. Studio Gascoigne’s Popo Dumplings project in Auckland is a working example of these pieces coming together in a single, high-turnover restaurant.
Why Hospitality Design Is Different From Retail
Retail design is largely transactional: a shopper enters, moves through a considered path, sees product, and leaves, often in minutes. Hospitality design is built around dwell time and repeat visits instead. A diner might sit for ninety minutes, a hotel guest might return weekly, and the room has to hold up under sustained attention in a way a retail floor doesn’t need to. Comfort, acoustics, and seating durability carry far more weight, and the layout has to keep working across a full service period rather than a single pass through the space. Studio Gascoigne runs both disciplines, which is part of why hospitality briefs at the studio tend to draw on retail’s sense of visual merchandising and flow while staying grounded in what makes a room work for two, three, or four hours at a time. The studio’s full services overview covers how hospitality, retail, and architecture work together on a single project.
Hospitality Projects Across Auckland and New Zealand
The studio’s hospitality portfolio spans multiple formats and scales. Hayama has been designed across several locations, including airside and landside sites at Auckland International Airport and a location at Auckland Domestic Airport. These are hospitality environments with some of the highest guest turnover and tightest operational constraints in the country. Other Auckland hospitality projects include Nosh Mount Eden, Cocoro Ponsonby, Un Deux Trois, Silk Road, and Halong Bay at Auckland International Airport. The Hotel De Brett project extends the studio’s hospitality work into accommodation, and Redcurrent Wellington takes it beyond Auckland.
Across all of it, the brief stays consistent: a hospitality interior has to earn repeat visits, run efficiently for the people working in it, and still look like somewhere worth choosing over the venue next door.
How a hospitality design project works
- Brief: we learn about your concept, menu, service style, capacity targets and opening date.
- Concept design: the layout, guest flow and the look and feel of the venue.
- Developed and detailed design: seating, joinery, materials, lighting, acoustics and the kitchen and service interface resolved in detail.
- Documentation and pricing: drawings and specifications for your builder to price and build from, plus what council needs for consent.
- Implementation: support through construction so the finished venue matches the design.
For more on how layout choices play out in a dining room, read our guide to restaurant interior design.
Why venues choose Studio Gascoigne as their hospitality interior designer
- Design that trades. Every layout decision is weighed against covers, table turns and service speed, rather than how the room photographs.
- Architects and designers in one team. Kitchen extraction, fire egress and structural work are solved inside the design.
- Proven in high-pressure venues. Our airport hospitality work, including Hayama and Halong Bay, runs with some of the heaviest guest turnover in the country.
- Retail thinking applied to hospitality. Our retail background brings visual merchandising and flow into every venue we design.
- Award-winning work. Our projects are part of a record of more than 170 design awards.
Hospitality interior design FAQs
What does a hospitality interior designer do?
A hospitality interior designer plans how a cafe, restaurant, bar or hotel works and feels: guest flow, seating layout, kitchen and service routes, lighting, materials and acoustics. At Studio Gascoigne this runs from the first brief through to drawings a builder can price and build from.
Do you design cafes, restaurants, bars and hotels?
Yes. Our hospitality work includes restaurants such as Popo Dumplings and Silk Road, airport venues such as Hayama and Halong Bay at Auckland International Airport, and accommodation through the Hotel De Brett project.
How much does hospitality interior design cost?
Fees depend on the size of the venue, the scope of work and how many design stages you need. We confirm fees once we understand your brief, so the best first step is a conversation about your site and opening date.
How long does a restaurant fit-out take?
It depends on the size of the venue, the design stages involved, landlord and council approvals, and the builder’s construction programme. We map out a realistic timeline at the brief stage, working back from your target opening date.
Can you handle kitchen extraction, fire egress and consents?
Yes. Registered architects work alongside our interior designers, so building matters such as fire egress, kitchen extraction and structural changes are resolved inside the design and documented for consent, not discovered on site.
Do you design hospitality venues outside Auckland?
Yes. Studio Gascoigne is based in Auckland, and our hospitality work includes Redcurrent in Wellington as well as venues at Auckland International and Domestic airports.