About the art
behind the experience.
Restaurant design starts with a simple question: why do people choose to leave home and spend part of their day with you? They may come for the food. They return for the experience.
It is rarely just about being hungry.
Whatever brings a guest through the door, something has to make that person want to return. Food matters, but food is never experienced in isolation.
The room, service, lighting, sound, movement and atmosphere all become part of how the meal is remembered. A well-planned restaurant makes guests more comfortable, supports better service and gives every plate a stronger setting.
Guests may not identify every design decision, but they notice how the room makes them feel.
What makes the food memorable?
The experience you have while eating it.
A beautifully prepared meal can be weakened by poor lighting, confusing circulation, noise or a room that feels disconnected from the restaurant’s identity. The opposite is also true. The right environment gives the food, the service and the brand a stronger stage.
A family of artists who understand how hospitality works.
Design Development Company was founded in 1983, but the creative history behind the firm began generations earlier. Art shaped the family. Restaurant operations sharpened the process.
Together, those experiences created a design practice that understands both the visual impact of a space and the practical work happening inside it.
The firm’s artistic background began in Europe during the early twentieth century and continued through several generations. Ron Lieberman’s grandfather worked as an artist on elaborate decorative detailing and murals inside first-class railway cars.
Ron’s father became an established artist. His wife’s father was an artist as well. Ron continued that history through his own work, followed by his son David.
Creativity wasn’t brought into the company. It grew up there.
Generations of drawing, painting, observation and design shaped the team’s instincts for proportion, color, balance, atmosphere and visual storytelling.
Different generations. A shared way of seeing the work.
Restaurant and hospitality design sits between art, business and human behavior. The artistic lineage supports the creative side. Decades of opening and operating real businesses provide the discipline behind it.
Ron Lieberman
Ron combines an artist’s eye with firsthand knowledge of restaurant design, development, construction and operations. His career has remained centered on art, hospitality environments and the practical realities of getting complex projects built.
David Lieberman
David began working in the office at age 12 and later earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from California State University, Long Beach. He brings the next generation of the family’s artistic perspective into conceptual development, presentation and implementation.
From the design studio to real restaurant operations.
A restaurant can look impressive in a photograph and still fail the people using it. Design Development’s operating history keeps the work grounded in what happens after opening night.
Learning commercial design from the inside.
Ron’s early industry experience included commercial fixture design and hospitality interiors, creating a practical foundation in how materials, layouts and real spaces come together.
Hotels, restaurants and hospitality projects.
Complex hospitality spaces required circulation, service, lighting, atmosphere and visual identity to work as one system. A room could not simply look good. It had to perform.
Twelve years with Associated Hosts, Inc.
Ron served as Vice President and head of new concepts, architecture and design, developing concepts and directing design and construction. The company designed, built, developed, owned and operated 80 restaurants and six hotels across 27 states.
Design Development Company is established.
Ron formed Design Development Company to bring together creative design and firsthand operating knowledge, approaching hospitality spaces as artists, designers and operators.
The guest experience isn’t a finishing touch. It is the project.
Great hospitality design works from both sides of the room: the guest experience and the operating experience.
Guests experience the restaurant through a sequence of small moments. Staff experience another version of the same space, shaped by kitchen flow, travel distance, storage, sightlines and service access.
Good design supports the concept, strengthens the brand and creates a room people remember, while giving the operating team a space that works.
Finding the entrance and understanding the arrival.
Knowing where to wait and how the room flows.
Feeling the lighting, acoustics, scale and atmosphere.
Supporting service paths, kitchen flow and staff movement.
Giving the guest a reason to settle in, stay longer and return.
Creative thinking for many types of hospitality spaces.
Some clients arrive with a developed concept. Others have a location, a menu and an early idea that still needs a clear identity. The process is adjusted to the operator, audience and environment.
Tell us what you are building and how it needs to work.
Bring the location, operating idea, challenges and vision. Design Development will help turn those pieces into an environment that supports the business and gives guests something worth remembering.