Most restaurants put as much thought into their wine list as their fit-out, then leave the music to whoever's on shift with their phone. Background music changes how long people stay, how busy a room feels and how staff get through a double. Here's how to set it up properly on Spotify.
Use one playlist per part of the day
A single "restaurant" playlist can't suit 7am coffee and 10pm cocktails. Split your trading day into the parts that genuinely feel different. A typical cafe-bar runs four: breakfast, lunch, afternoon and night. A cocktail bar might only need two: early evening and late. Each playlist then has one job.
Make each playlist long enough
Staff hear your music for eight hours a shift, five days a week. A 40-song playlist repeats several times a day, and your regulars will notice. We build each venue playlist at around 150 tracks, which is roughly ten hours of music, so a song doesn't come back around in the same shift.
Staff hear your playlist for eight hours a shift. If it's 40 songs long, they've heard it five times by close.
Refresh it every week
Even a 150-track playlist goes stale over a few weeks. Every week we swap about 25 tracks out and 25 fresh ones in, so the playlist keeps its character but never sounds the same as last month. Doing it weekly is far easier than rebuilding the whole thing every quarter.
Match tempo to the room
Pace matters as much as genre. Slower, relaxed music suits long dinners and conversation; quicker tempos suit a busy lunch turnover or a bar that's filling up. Research on restaurant music has found that slower music can lead diners to stay longer, which matters if you want them ordering another bottle, and doesn't if you need the table back. Decide what each part of your day needs, then pick the pace to match.
Get the volume right
Background music should sit under conversation, not compete with it. Set a volume for each part of the day and make it the staff's job to keep it there. Lunch is usually quieter than late night; the room fills up and gets louder as the evening goes on, and the music can rise with it.
Spotify settings worth changing
- Crossfade. Turn it on (a few seconds) so there's no dead air between songs.
- Explicit content. Filter it off unless your concept genuinely suits it.
- Downloads. Download your playlists on the venue's device, so a Wi-Fi drop doesn't kill the music mid-service.
- Autoplay. Turn it off, so Spotify doesn't drift into random songs when a playlist ends.
Take it out of staff hands
The fastest way to lose a room's feel is "who put this on?" Give staff one rule: play the right playlist for the time of day, at the agreed volume. Requests and changes go into next week's refresh, not onto someone's phone.
Want us to build it for you?
We build and refresh your venue's Spotify playlists every week, from $35 per playlist. Try it free for two weeks.
Playlist curation