Retail & hospitality
with the details that matter.
Store rollouts, restaurant remodels, hotels, and tenant fit-outs. We pair the capture method to the way your team will use the result.
What needs to be
measured first?
Rollout and remodel programmes need consistent measured documentation across many sites, because a prototype design only works if the existing box matches what the prototype assumed. Fast, repeatable capture during off-hours is the requirement, along with back-of-house and mechanical space that never got drawn.
Every facility has a different risk surface. We start with access, geometry density, and the decision the capture needs to unlock — then choose between laser scanning, drone mapping, or both.
Talk through a scope- Store rollouts
- Restaurant remodels
- Hotel renovations
- Tenant fit-outs
- Back-of-house
- Prototype conformance
Capturing a store, restaurant, or hotel between trading hours
Rollout and remodel work is about conformance: a prototype design only works if the existing box matches what the prototype assumed. The capture is quick, repeatable, and standardized across sites, because the point is comparing one location with another.
The box itself
Demising walls, lease line, column positions and footprints, storefront opening, floor levels, and the structural bay. These are the dimensions a prototype is fitted into, and they are the ones lease exhibits describe optimistically.
Ceiling zone and available height
Structure above, existing duct and sprinkler, and the actual clear height available for a finished ceiling. Prototype ceiling heights and light positions are the first thing to fail in an older building, and they fail against the lowest duct rather than the deck.
Back of house
Stockroom, kitchen, walk-in coolers, hood and grease duct routing, electrical and telecom rooms, and the service corridor. Back of house is almost never drawn accurately and is where most remodel change orders are generated.
Restrooms and accessible routes
Fixture positions, clear floor space, door approach dimensions, and the route from entrance to restroom including any level change. Accessibility upgrades are a common driver for remodels and they need real dimensions, not nominal ones.
Storefront, signage band, and exterior
Façade geometry, signage band position and height, entry doors, canopy, and the sidewalk or mall concourse condition in front. Brand elements are fabricated off site to fixed dimensions and installed onto whatever is actually there.
Trading hours, landlords, and occupied rooms
Retail capture happens outside trading hours nearly every time, which in a mall means whatever window the landlord's rules permit and in a standalone unit usually means overnight. Certificates of insurance, loading dock scheduling, and after-hours building access are all landlord processes with their own lead times, and in an operating restaurant the practical window is between close and the morning prep crew arriving.
Hotels have a different problem: the building is never empty, and rooms become available one at a time according to occupancy. The workable approach is capturing a representative sample of room types plus all the public and back-of-house areas in one visit, rather than trying to reach every key. That works because guest rooms are meant to be typical — but the sample has to be chosen deliberately, covering each type, each stack position, and any floor where the building geometry changes, rather than whichever rooms happened to be free.
More on how this works in practice is on our guide to scanning without a shutdown.
Deliverables for a rollout program
Multi-site programs live or die on consistency. A slightly less detailed deliverable applied identically across forty sites is worth far more than a richer one that differs each time.
| The decision | What to ask for | Why that one |
|---|---|---|
| Prototype conformance check | Measured plan and section against a fixed template | The design team is asking one question per site, and the drawing should answer it the same way every time. |
| Full remodel or fit-out design | Point cloud plus plans, sections, and elevations | Ceiling heights, structure, and back-of-house conditions all need to be measurable rather than described. |
| Kitchen or hood replacement | Dense cloud with a modeled kitchen and duct route | Grease duct routing to the roof is a three-dimensional problem through a building that was not designed for it. |
| Hotel renovation across room types | Typical room plans plus public area drawings | A verified typical per room type, with the exceptions identified, is what a renovation package is built from. |
Formats and what each one is good for are covered on the deliverables page.
What trips up rollout programs
- Trusting the lease exhibit — Lease drawings describe an intention and a rentable area, not a built condition. Column positions, demising wall thickness, and storefront opening widths routinely differ from the exhibit by enough to matter to a fixture plan drawn to the inch.
- Assuming rooms are identical — Hotel guest rooms and repeated retail bays vary more than their type designation suggests, especially where a building has been renovated in phases. Capturing one room per type and treating it as universal is how a renovation package meets its first exception on day two.
- Leaving out the floor levels — Slab slope, thresholds, and level changes into back-of-house areas govern accessible routes and drainage in kitchens. They are invisible in plan and expensive to discover once a floor finish has been ordered.
- Ignoring the path to the roof — New kitchen exhaust, condensers, and make-up air all need a route from the tenancy to the roof through a building somebody else owns. That route is a structural, landlord, and geometry question at once, and it belongs in the survey scope from the beginning.
Questions from brand and construction managers
Can you keep the deliverable identical across every site?
That is the point of a rollout scope. Agreeing the drawing template, layers, dimensioning convention, and file naming once and applying it to every location means the design team reads the fortieth site the same way as the first, and differences between sites stand out as real rather than as formatting.
How long does one store take?
A typical unit is a short visit rather than a day-long exercise, and the schedule is usually set by access rather than capture — when the landlord permits entry, when the store closes, and how many locations can be reached in a night. That is why rollouts are planned geographically, grouping sites that share access rules.
Can you capture an operating restaurant?
Between close and prep is the usual window, and it is enough for a normal-sized unit if the route is agreed beforehand. Kitchens capture better when they are clean and clear, so the end of a deep-clean shift is a much better moment than the end of a busy service.
Do you handle occupied hotels?
Yes, by capturing public areas, corridors, and back-of-house in full and sampling guest rooms by type and stack position as they become available. The sample has to be chosen deliberately rather than by whichever rooms are vacant, because the exceptions — corner rooms, rooms at building joints, accessible rooms — are exactly the ones a renovation package needs to get right.
Pair TLS interiors with drone exteriors for one coordinate story.
Roof, yard, tanks, structures, and the building envelope can live in the same project handoff when the control is planned upfront.
See existing conditionsMake the invisible
measurable.
Tell us what is inside, outside, and on the line. We will help you scope the capture and the handoff — in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut.
Request a scan quote