The question I would seek to answer in my research would be: do the colors that affect mood and appetite in restaurant patrons have the same effect on employees? More specifically, I would want to know whether appetite stimulants such as red (Singh, 2006) and yellow (Kaszubowski, 2004) stimulate the appetite of restaurant employees. Furthermore, does this increase the frequency of breaks for meals or snacking? Does the arousal effect of red increase energy and therefore spark more time spent working? On the flipside, do cooler colors such as blue and green, which have been known to relax restaurant goers and suppress appetite (Singh, 2006), influence workers in a similar manner. Do employees in a restaurant decorated primarily in blue and/or green eat less and work more? Do they relax more, and, in fact, work less? Researchers have devoted so much time to how color effects those eating at the restaurants that they have not paid nearly enough attention to those who work at these establishments.
One significant difference between the two is that the customers can eat at will with no penalty or restrictions; the employees, meanwhile, usually work for a set number of hours, with specified break times and lengths built in to their schedule. Thus, it might seem that it is more difficult for workers to give in to their stimulated appetite. The research will need to observe whether workers disobey the rules and take longer breaks then they are allowed, so that they can eat more. Likewise, workers with a suppressed appetite will not cut their allotted breaks short just because they are not hungry. Therefore, researchers would observe these workers doing things other than eating on their breaks.
My hypothesis is that, since the psychological effects of colors are rather constant, the employees at these restaurants will experience the same effects as the patrons with regard to effect on appetite. I predict that experimenters will find employees in restaurants with red or yellow walls eating on their breaks, or illegally increasing their breaks to eat, more often than those working in restaurants with blue or green walls. Likewise, those workers in restaurants colored with appetite suppressants will spend less of their down time eating and not take as many unauthorized breaks. Employees working in restaurants with walls that are neutral in terms of effect on appetite, such as black, white, and grey, will fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. My hypothesis as far as the more general arousing effects of red and yellow, and relaxing effects of blue and green, is that that these colors will not have as much of an effect on mood as they will on appetite, for two reasons. First, the employees in restaurants are constantly surrounded by food. Second, the interior decoration of restaurants is designed to affect appetite more than mood (Singh, 2006), so the subtleties of the colors and how they are planned will influence appetite to a greater extent. Therefore, researchers will not observe increased activity in red or yellow workplaces, and will not see decreased activity in blue and green restaurants.
The method for testing these hypotheses is not very easy. The most viable option would be to study current employees at existing restaurants. No owner of any restaurant would allow researchers to plant employees in their establishments as test subjects. Additionally, it would be far too costly and time consuming to build a restaurant for the purpose of testing. Thus, the research would have to be done at established restaurants. The first step in the research process would be to gather a sample group of restaurants. Restaurants of all shapes and sizes must be included for the study to be as accurate as possible. Fast food restaurants, family style sit-downs, and all-you-can-eat buffets must all make the list because different restaurants decorate their interiors with specific colors to elicit distinct responses. Likewise, since this is a study on employees and how much they work, motivation is a factor, and the restaurants that researchers choose to study must run the gamut of employee wages. Geographic location, climate, and neighborhood atmosphere must also be taken into account. This is because the social attitude toward work can be different in a rural town than in a city, or just in different towns and cities. Additionally, excessive heat may affect employee morale and motivation. Lastly, the restaurants to be included in the study would have to be of all different interior colors. After the list is compiled, the restaurants must be categorized and grouped so that similar restaurants can be studied together and compared.
Once the listing, categorizing, and grouping are finished, the studying and measuring can begin. Each restaurant will be evaluated on efficiency, customer satisfaction, employee morale, employee hunger level, average length of time employees spend working, and average length of time employees spend eating or on break. These elements of the restaurant will be measured by observation, customer surveys, and employee surveys. One thing to consider while assessing the effects of colors in these restaurants will be the separation of the cooking area from the eating area. Chefs will mostly, if not only, be exposed to the colors of the kitchen, whereas waiters, waitresses, hosts, hostesses, bus people, and cashiers will see the colors of both the kitchen and the dining room. Therefore, the information gathered from kitchen staff might yield different results than the figures collected from the portion of the staff that interacts with customers. This is especially important to note because interior decorators are more likely to paint the kitchen, the place where workers have the most access to food, with a color that will suppress appetite. Likewise, they will paint the dining area, the place where customers order and eat their meals, with a color that stimulates appetite. After compiling considerable data, the next step of the process would begin: with the permission of the managers and/or owners of these restaurants, the walls of these establishments would be painted different colors. This would present an opportunity to see how the same employees, in the same town, getting paid the same wages, etc. work within different color schemes. By only changing the colors of each restaurant, we can isolate the effects that are specifically caused by these colors. Researchers would measure the same evaluation criteria and compare data from different colors.
While this research might seem tedious or outlandish, it is very relevant and important. Simply put, people eat every day. Almost every town in America plays host to many restaurants. The food industry has a large impact on our economy and our lives, and thus, research that would make it more efficient would be very beneficial. In testing the psychological effects of colors in restaurants, we must not neglect the employees. We must know whether appetite stimulants disrupt work, and what other effects colors might have on the waiters, waitresses, and cashiers that serve us each and every day.
