In this article
Every day, dozens or hundreds of people walk past your storefront and never come in — and almost nobody in hospitality measures why. Your Google profile gets tracked down to the click, your social media down to the view, but the single most expensive piece of marketing real estate you own — your own facade — is never measured at all. This article does: seven numbers that turn your storefront into an actual funnel, with a calculator that runs it on your own street.
A passerby walking along your facade isn't a 'free' impression — it's a window of a few seconds in which a letter has to be legible, a window has to show something, and a price has to be visible. Miss that window and that person is gone for good, without you ever knowing they were there.
Nowhere else on this site is the physical storefront treated as a marketing channel. Every other article covers Google, social media, email or reviews — all digital or reputational channels. But for a street-facing restaurant, the facade itself is the channel with the most daily impressions, and the only one nobody ever tracks a conversion rate for.
That isn't because it can't be measured. Walking speed, legibility distance, glass coverage and contrast are all quantities with a known, documented rule of thumb behind them — the same kind of numbers the sign industry has used for decades to size a letter, and urban planners use to decide how much glass a street needs to feel alive.
Seven numbers, in the order they actually hit a passerby: how long your facade stays within reading range, how big your letters need to be to fill that window, how much glass makes a facade feel open, what changes after dark, which law both requires and helps you at once, why the first steps inside don't count, and — the core of it — what a single percentage point somewhere in that chain is actually costing you.
Why nobody ever runs the numbers on this
A storefront is rarely looked at as a system. The owner picks a typeface because it looks nice, hangs lighting because the neighbours did, and tapes up a price board because the permit requires it — three separate decisions, made at three separate moments, that nobody ever looks at together as one funnel.
It isn't a matter of taste either. A facade that looks good to the owner — up close, standing still, in daylight — isn't automatically a facade that works for someone cycling past, driving by after dark, or glancing for two seconds before they're gone.
That makes the storefront a different kind of marketing problem than the rest of this site covers. There's no ad budget you can adjust and no A/B test you can run overnight — there's only the physics of what a human being can see, read and decide in the time available. That physics is exactly what this article walks through.
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In the order they actually hit a passerby: first how long they can look at your facade, then whether they can read what they see, and only after that what it actually earns you in guests and revenue.
1. 4 seconds — how long an average storefront stays within reading range of a passerby
A pedestrian walks at roughly 1.4 metres per second — about 5 km/h, the figure urban and traffic planners have used for decades to plan pedestrian flows. For a 6-metre-wide storefront, that means a passerby is within close range of your building for barely 4.3 seconds — and that's the absolute maximum, measured directly in front of the door.
That window is shorter than it looks. Nobody looks straight at your facade from their first step to their last — attention is split between the road, other pedestrians, the next building and their own phone screen. Of those 4.3 seconds, only a fraction ever actually lands on your sign.
For a narrower 3-metre frontage, that window shrinks to about 2.1 seconds; for a wide 12-metre corner unit, it stretches to nearly 8.6 seconds. Every extra metre of frontage is literally extra viewing time — which is exactly why the rest of this article is about what you do with those few seconds, not about how to make them longer.
2. 1.2 metres of legible distance per centimetre of letter height — the rule of thumb behind a readable sign
The sign industry has used a simple rule of thumb for decades to size a letter: roughly 1 centimetre of letter height is legible, under good conditions, from about 1.2 metres away. It's a rough approximation — contrast, typeface, lighting and background push the number in both directions — but it gives you an order of magnitude to design a sign around instead of guessing.
Distance alone doesn't tell the whole story. What matters is whether a passerby has enough time to read your sign within that distance before they've walked past it — and that time depends entirely on how fast they're moving. Someone walking has far more time than someone cycling, and a cyclist has far more time than someone passing in a car.
Run the numbers on your own letters and the distance from your sign to the pavement: how tall do your letters need to be, and is that enough for a walker, a cyclist or a driver passing by?
Minimum letter height to still be readable in time at 5 metres from the pavement — for a pedestrian, a cyclist and a driver.
Rule of thumb, not exact law: contrast, typeface and lighting push this number in both directions. A bar that reaches past the dashed line is, in theory, no longer legible in time for that passerby with this example sign.
Is your sign readable in time?
Enter your own letter height and the distance from the sign to the pavement.
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Runs on the same rule of thumb as above (≈1.2 m of legible distance per cm of letter height, ≈1.5 seconds needed to register a short name) — an indication, not a guarantee. Everything calculates in your browser; nothing is sent or stored.
3. 50 to 70% glass — the rule of thumb for a facade that feels open
Urban design guidance for a lively street — often found in the 'active frontage' requirements European and North American cities apply to ground-floor buildings — tends to land on the same rule of thumb: roughly 50 to 70% of a facade at eye level should be transparent glass, not a solid wall, opaque signage or a fully frosted window.
For a restaurant, that's not an aesthetic guideline, it's a conversion question. A facade that's more than half closed, frosted or plastered over doesn't read to a passerby as 'welcoming restaurant' — it reads as 'closed' or 'I can't tell what's happening in there', and that second impression beats a well-placed logo above it almost every time.
That doesn't mean every window has to be fully open — some coverage for privacy or sun is normal. It does mean that anyone who sacrifices more than half their glass to a large seasonal banner or a shutter left down during the day is effectively switching off their own storefront at exactly the moment it needs to convince someone.
4. After dark, an unlit sign stops existing
Most independent restaurants take more covers in the evening than during the day — dinner outweighs lunch in almost every kitchen. That means the window in which a passerby sees your storefront falls, for a large share of your revenue, in the dark rather than in daylight.
An unlit sign doesn't partially disappear during those hours — it stops existing entirely. Contrast is what makes a letter legible, and without light on the sign itself or behind it, there's simply no contrast left to read, no matter how big the letters looked during the day.
The practical fix is rarely complicated: backlit or halo-lit letters, a few spotlights on the facade, and a timer that switches the light on automatically at dusk instead of waiting for someone to remember. A competitor with a lit sign exists for the passerby; your unlit facade doesn't reappear until tomorrow morning.
5. The posted-price law that removes your biggest hesitation for free
Several EU countries legally require a hospitality business to display its prices visibly from outside — not as a suggestion, but as consumer protection. France's 'obligation d'affichage des prix' requires a visible menu with prices at the entrance. Belgium has a comparable requirement through its royal decree on price display in hospitality. The exact rules vary sharply by country and sometimes by municipality — always check your own local requirement.
What those laws share in practice is a second effect that goes beyond compliance alone: the same price board the law requires is exactly what removes the hesitation that stops someone from stepping inside. 'What is this going to cost me?' is one of the most common unspoken doubts about an unfamiliar restaurant, and a window with no price indication at all leaves that question unanswered at the exact moment it matters most.
A legible price board at the entrance isn't a compliance chore to hide as unobtrusively as possible — it's one of the few pieces of text on your facade that removes a concrete doubt instead of just looking nice.
6. The first few steps — where nobody reads your sign any more
Retail researcher Paco Underhill described what he calls the 'decompression zone' in his book 'Why We Buy': the first few metres immediately inside an entrance, where a visitor is still transitioning from outside to inside and registers almost nothing of what's there — signs, displays, even the host stand itself.
For a restaurant, that zone is the stretch between the door and the point where a guest is genuinely 'in' — the first few steps past the mat, often three to five metres. A queue, a cluttered host stand, or a specials board placed right there is rarely noticed, however well the exterior did its job.
That means the six numbers above only get a guest as far as the door, not any further. A strong storefront that leads into a chaotic entrance wastes exactly the attention it just won — the decompression zone is where a good first impression outside can still be lost inside.
7. From passerby to guest — run it on your own numbers
The six numbers above describe how a storefront works. This last one describes what it costs you when it doesn't: a funnel from passerby to guest, in four steps — passes by, notices, stops, walks in — that you fill in with your own estimates.
Every step in that funnel leaks people, and every leak has its own price tag. Someone who never notices your facade is a different problem from someone who notices but doesn't stop, and that's a different problem again from someone who stops but doesn't walk in — three different causes, three different fixes, and three different amounts.
Fill in your own street below: how many people pass per hour, how many hours you're open, and your own estimate of each percentage. The calculator converts that into what each individual stage is already costing you — per week and per year.
An illustrative example: of every 100 passersby, 42% notice your facade, 18% stop, and 6% eventually walk in.
An illustrative example, not an average for your own street — enter your own numbers below for your own funnel.
What is your funnel costing you, per week and per year?
Passersby per hour × hours open × notice, stop and entry rate × average spend.
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Each leak above is the value of fixing ONLY that one stage, with the other two stages left at your own current rate — not a summed total, because the three leaks overlap. This is revenue, not profit, and not a prediction: it's the amount at stake. Everything calculates in your browser; nothing is sent or stored.
What to do with this this week, this month, and this season
You don't fix a storefront with one new light bulb — it's a system of three steps that build on each other.
This week — measure what you actually have
- Walk your own street from both directions and time how long you can read your own sign before you've passed it.
- Measure your sign's letter height and its distance from the pavement, and enter them into the calculator above.
- Estimate what share of your glass at eye level is genuinely transparent versus plastered, frosted or boarded up.
- Check whether your outdoor price board meets your country's legal requirement and is readable from the pavement.
This month — fix the biggest leak first
- Is your sign unlit at night? That's usually the cheapest fix and the fastest win — a timer and a couple of spotlights.
- Are your letters too small for someone driving past on the main road? Replace just the main sign, not the whole facade lettering.
- Is more than half your facade closed off? Weigh which decal or seasonal banner actually earns its place versus what's been hanging there out of habit for years.
- Clear the first three to five metres past your door — that's where a strong storefront can still be lost.
This season — run the numbers again
- Re-enter the funnel calculator after every change and compare the three leaks with a month ago.
- Ask a few regulars how they first noticed your restaurant — it's a real-world check on your own notice and stop-rate estimates.
- Revisit seasonal adjustments as the clock changes: the window above shifts with daylight and dusk.
The window is short, but it isn't random
Every one of the seven numbers above describes the same few seconds from a different angle: how long your facade is visible, whether it's legible, whether it feels open, whether it still exists after dark, whether it removes a hesitation, and whether the first steps inside don't immediately undo that work.
None of them require a renovation. A timer, a bigger main sign, one less panel of frosted film and a tidied-up entrance are each small changes — the point of this article isn't that your storefront needs to be radically different, it's that each of those small choices has a measurable effect on something you've never measured until now.
Run the funnel above on your own numbers, see which leak is biggest, and start there. The passersby are already walking past your facade — the only question is how many of them you actually notice from today onward.