The hour between the door and the till is not a guess.
We sit in the rooms you already run, mark where people pause, which shelves they skip, and which hours the baskets thin out — then we draw those patterns so you can look at them with the staff who were there.
A Tuesday morning on the floor
Most of our work starts before the lunch rush, with a notebook, a floor sketch, and an introduction to whoever is on shift.
We do not arrive with a camera crew. One of us is introduced as a visitor taking notes for the owner. Staff keep serving. We mark door counts, linger times at a table or a rail, and the moment a person turns back toward the street with nothing in hand.
After a stretch of days we sit with the till extracts you already have — if you keep them — and draw the hours against what we saw. The pictures are simple: a floor plan with pause marks, a strip of hours, a short list of baskets that keep repeating. The point is that the owner and the shift lead can argue about the same drawing, not about a feeling from last Saturday.
Customer behavior study
A three-to-six-week commission: on-site watching, a review of the records you already keep, drawn floor and hour sheets, and a ninety-minute briefing with the people who work the rooms.
Other ways we can be in the room
Not every owner needs a six-week study. Some want a pair of observation days. Others already have till extracts and only want those hours and baskets drawn out on paper.
Finding briefings
A sit-down with the drawings — yours from a past week of notes, or ours from a study — so the owner and the shift lead argue about the same marks on the paper.
Observation days
One or two agreed days on the floor when a full study would be too heavy — useful before a refit, a seasonal menu, or a new window.
Visit pattern review
Desk work on till extracts, booking lists, or stamp cards you already keep — hours, repeat names, and thin baskets drawn without a stranger sitting in the room.
“They sat through two rainy Thursdays in the side room we never thought mattered. The drawing showed that guests used that sofa as a waiting bench, not as a place to order. We moved the small menu cards. That was the whole change.”
Lika N., guest house near Fabrika, after a customer behavior study in 2025
From the journal
Notes from floors we have sat on: pause points, empty-handed exits, and what a Wednesday till roll will not tell you on its own.
Reading a receipt pile without drowning in it
A fortnight of ordinary paper is more useful than a holiday week. How we sort till tape for a visit pattern review when the files arrive in a bag.
What a pause at a shelf actually tells you
A hand that hovers is not the same as a hand that will buy. How we mark pauses on a Tbilisi floor without turning shoppers into a story they did not agree to.
Saturday versus Wednesday in a Vera café
The same pastry case can feed a neighbourhood morning and a visiting afternoon. Mixing those hours on one till total hides the quieter trade you actually depend on.