This Old Front of the House
Redesigns open doors to additional brand enhancements.
By Kristina Buchthal, Senior Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 6/15/2006
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Wear and tear are good signs in foodservice, while carpeting less traveled means an operation less visited. To keep a concept looking fresh, operators often must renovate interiors, both for repairs and design upgrades.
But remodeling isn’t as simple as choosing fashionable new looks. Operators need to freshen paint, wallpaper and flooring without losing ambience or business. And when a remodel is in order, an affordable design that will not become quickly outdated is a must.
The University of North Texas (UNT) in Denton is using a renovation of its Maple Street Cafeteria as an opportunity to introduce new menu options and food-preparation styles. The dormitory dining hall has been closed since May as the university replaces its straight-line food counter with several dining stations that offer a more-diverse array of options.
The 250-seat dining hall hadn’t been remodeled for 15 years. Like its design, Maple’s previous menu was old-fashioned—mashed potatoes and gravy, macaroni and cheese, chicken fingers, corn dogs and casseroles. Now, carbohydrate-heavy cooking gives way to lighter fare. The new cafeteria—dubbed “The Mean Greens”—will sport a charbroiler, four gas cooktops, panini station and flat-top grill.
“These are things that were not possible in the original design,” says Regenia S. Phillips, UNT director of dining services. “The straight-line design was preventing us from doing anything innovative. It was restrictive. It felt antiquated.”
The redesigned dining area will be decorated in cream, green, purple and cobalt blue, and feature a caramel-covered countertop—more modern than the brushed-steel line it will replace.
The eatery also will feature a revamped dessert bar, designed with health-conscious eating in mind. The previous dessert station, part of the serving line, had four tiers and could display about 50 dessert items. Under the new plan, the station will be in the back of the dining hall, have just two tiers and feature diminutive desserts, Phillips says.
“If we have cookies, they’ll be smaller and they’ll be on plates,” Phillips says. “If we have a cobbler, it will be served in a shot glass. You’ll just get a taste.”
Before the remodel, Maple served about 300 lunches each day. Phillips expects that the renovation will lead to 30% to 40% more lunchtime business.
Pardon the Dust
For some operators, though, closing down during renovations isn’t an option. Deon Lategan, residential dining services director at Colorado State University (CSU) in Fort Collins, envisioned moving the serving area from three straight-line service counters to a single multicounter island in the middle of Corbett Hall dining center.
“Facilities said: ‘There’s no way you can do a renovation that big in the middle of the dining room. You’re going to have to shut the place down for six months,’” Lategan says.
Instead, the construction crew walled off the center of the dining room with plywood to create a dust barrier and connected the area to one of the dining hall’s external doors, so the construction area wasn’t open to the cafeteria. The result was a more-innovative design that opened up the foodservice area, reduced the wait for different food stations, and created an open finishing kitchen so students could see meals being prepared.
Lategan says guests believe food quality has improved substantially, and usage has increased 30% at the dining hall since the renovation was completed in April 2005.
“The closer you can put prep employees to the customer, the better the food quality is going to be,” Lategan says. “It is a lot more difficult for a cook to hand a customer a burnt piece of toast when he’s looking him right in the eye, versus it coming out of some hotbox.”
The redesigned hall now has three rooms—which used to hold the food service lines—that are going unused. But Lategan sees them as an opportunity to create private dining rooms, where student groups or professors can conduct meetings or lectures over a meal.
“Reservable dining space is always in high demand on a university campus,” Lategan says. There are some groups that want to have a lunch meeting but they don’t want to do it in the middle of a dining hall, they want to close the door and have a speaker or a projector or a multimedia presentation.”
Plastic Surgery
A complete renovation also can give a business a springboard for local media coverage and promotions.
When Jillian’s renovated the Groove Shack nightclub concept within its Albany, N.Y., location, it closed the nightclub for a month during construction. But for three of those weeks, Jillian’s promoted the new club to generate buzz. The Dallas-based chain of entertainment restaurants ran radio and newspaper advertisements, and had a preopening VIP party that garnered local press attention.
“It was like we were doing a grand opening of a new concept,” says Chuck Corcoran, vice president of marketing for parent JBC Entertainment Inc., based in Louisville, Ky. “When people walked in they couldn’t believe it was the same club.”
The nightclub, an ultrahip lounge named Ski Bar, features bar stools upholstered with faux cowhide, steel poles throughout the dance floor, 60-inch plasma televisions, a wall of curtains, colored lighting and plush booths and banquettes. The design also features a VIP area that offers bottle service for alcohol.
Since opening in October, the club—which can hold 350 people—regularly has had hour-long waits to get in on Saturday nights, Corcoran says. “We went after the high-energy clubs in New York City and Los Angeles,” he says. “We felt it was a concept that needed to be changed. We were doing very well, but we felt we could do better.”
But Corcoran cautions that advertising such an extensive renovation can be tricky, because construction delays can postpone an opening and confuse guests. Jillian’s leaves a 45-day buffer for completing a renovation project, he says, noting that the Albany redesign was finished on schedule.
He declined to detail renovation costs but says restaurants and bars must weigh capital expenditures against revenue potential. “Every expansion has to be based on specific financial criteria,” Corcoran says. “You have to have a goal price range and a realistic estimate of what you’re going to get from it. If your club holds 150 people, you have to make sure you scale the renovation appropriately.”
Corcoran also notes that simple changes to an interior can help freshen a operation without requiring large capital expenditures. At Jillian’s location in Indianapolis, the restaurant was updated with fresh paint, new carpeting and refinished wood bar to prepare for the Big Ten Basketball Tournament in Indianapolis in January.
“We hosted a number of private parties, and we wanted to put our best foot forward,” Corcoran says. “We have learned that a fresh coat of paint, new carpet and new video games please customers.”
Fishing for Feedback
When remodeling a location, it can be difficult to keep the décor that identifies a restaurant’s brand while updating elements that make the facility feel out-of-date. At Steak and Ale restaurants, executives were cautious not to lose the chain’s brand in remodeling. So they surveyed customers via e-mail and Internet about the restaurants’ décor, says Charlie Morrison, president of Plano, Texas-based Steak and Ale. What the company found was the customers liked the restaurants’ 18th-century English country look and the restaurant’s salad bar.
“If you understand what your customers like about your concept, you can be very intelligent about the decisions you make,” Morrison says. “There are some things they are very passionate about. It could be a color, or a chair or the amount of light.”
“If you get enough feedback, you ought to be able to figure out what their preferences are and design around them.”
Sub Standard
Menomonee Falls, Wis.-based Cousins Subs last changed the look of its units in 1993, when it introduced a red-, black-and-white exterior designed around ’90s styles of open, clean, airy looks.
“It was nice at the time,” Maria Piotter, vice president of franchise development and a franchisee, says of the design. “It’s just like fashion, only it lasts a little bit longer. You have to keep up your look. Now, the look is warm and cozy, the kind of place you can hang out for the night.”
Piotter admits that Cousins modeled its new interiors—decked in golds, greens and earth tones—after Starbucks interiors, because they are inviting and comfortable, and encourage customers to linger.
“Why recreate the wheel?” she asks.
The new design also relocated impulse purchase items, such as chips and cookies, from side racks to shelves below the cash register. Sales of those items increased in each renovated store and total unit sales rose 8%, Piotter says.
One thing that Cousins didn’t change was the chain’s logo. While a remodeled interior can increase sales, a new logo can decrease brand equity.
“We couldn’t change our logo,” Piotter says. That would be like changing the front page of The New York Times.”
New Arches
Even the country’s largest restaurant chain felt a need to freshen its look.
McDonald’s opened its new flagship store in hometown Oak Brook, Ill., in May 2005. The unit features a curved service counter, two levels of seating, oversized windows, plasma-screen televisions, wireless Internet access and a bright white-and-yellow décor.
About 30 stores have since opened with similar designs but none as elaborate as the flagship, says Danya Proud, spokeswoman for McDonald’s. Some have fireplaces and other additions, she says.
“A lot of people say they can relax there. They’ve got this lounge feeling,” Proud says. “We have moved away from that fiberglass seating McDonald’s was known for.”
She explains that remodeling stores is essential as McDonald’s introduces new products and adapts to consumer tastes.
“We have got to stay relevant to today’s customers. People want contemporary designs, they want wireless Internet, they want plasmas,” Proud says. “We have added new food news and new food choices, so we have to provide a restaurant experience that stays consistent with other things that we are doing in the business.”
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