Food Facility is a "working prototype restaurant where the central kitchen is replaced by kitchens of existing take-out restaurants in the area." Sounds cool, doesn't it? Basically, Food Facility is a social/dining experiment with a twist of performance art. Designer Marti Guixe sees Food Facility as the opportunity to deconstruct the idea of a restaurant, thereby altering the foundation of what we perceive to be a traditional cultural and culinary experience.

Food Facility centers around two main players, the Food Adviser and the Food DJ. Simply put, the food adviser advises you on the quality and estimated delivery time of the different take-out dinners available and will place the order for you, while the Food DJ receives the order from the scooter delivery boys and will do away with the abundance of wrapping materials before the food adviser serves it to you at your table. What you end up with is a full service dining experience that parallels "the virtual possibilities promised by search engines like Google or Yahoo."

While this idea seems a bit avant-garde to most, it's actually not new. For example, in 1990, the legendary Supperclub (Netherlands) and Chef Thor Vos organized an evening where the food was ordered from various take-out restaurants, including Mc Donalds. And in China, select street corner vendors work in the same style, selling food that's ordered from little take-out kitchens in the neighborhood. The only thing they provide is chopsticks, a small plastic kitchen table and a chair.

So where does the performance art aspect of Food Facility come in? Food Facility was set up like an exhibit in that it ran for a limited time (November 4th through December 11th) and was only open Fridays and Saturdays from 6 to 10 PM. Restricted timeframes often encourage a sense of immediacy, illustrating to potential patrons that this is a transient experience not to be missed. The unique customer experience Food Facility offers makes them stand out in the overly saturated market of restaurants, proving that there's always room for innovation.