Simple: make the lighting intimate and relaxed.

Always use warm white (circa 3000K) globes and lights.

I would recommend to use designer pendant lights for restaurants, particularly industrial style lights. They cost more but they are a fantastic investment.

Ambience is absolutely critical for all restaurants. If you don't have them, your customers will not enter and if they do, they will not return.

Industrial style pendant lights are very in. So are fairy lights.

A study I once read that surveyed 2000 people found that 30% of them will walk out of a restaurant if the lighting is bad - that should tell you how critical it is.

Restaurant light should be intimate and in layers, to maximize the ambience.

Also use picture lights to highlight paintings on the wall and other interesting things.

Most restaurants have light that is too dim for customers to read the menus, which is extremely irritating.

I was recently at a restaurant that had a thin flexible torch attached to all its menus that made it easy to read without disturbing other patrons. I thought it was brilliant!

Make sure that the light you use - whether ceiling lights, pendant lights or table lamps - do not create glare into people's eyes. It is a very easy mistake to do and very hard to fix.

If the restaurant is open all day then you will need dimmable lights, because the light should be progressively dimmed as the day gets longer.

Also, get lights with very good colour rendering index (CRI) otherwise the food colour will look off.

Make sure you don't mix and match too much. For example use only one or maybe two types of pendant lights - don't use multiple types, that creates a very crowded appearance that is not appealing.