Ciabatta Restaurant Branding
Location: Wyommissing, PA
Reach: Regional
Targets: Families and area businesses
Abstract //
Three brothers came to Vigor with a building, a long Italian lineage of creating great food and the drive to create something big and novel. Vigor was asked to develop an innovative new concept, literally from soup to nuts.
Key Challenges //
- Research local demographics and competitive landscape to determine viability
- Create a successful restaurant concept around the brothers' heritage and proficiencies
- Develop food offering and all menu items
- Design interior space
- Develop a name, brand identity and craft positioning fodder for the restaurant
- Design uniforms, interiors and environmental elements to further the brand experience
- Design restaurant operations, develop internal procedures and policies for management
Do it with Vigor //
Vigor began from scratch conducting courses of primary and secondary research, competitive analyses and an overall restaurant brandscape assessment that would guide our formulation of a viable concept. We determined that in this crowded food service hotspot, the markets we were targeting put the highest values on speed of service and quality of food. These drivers led us to create three distinct restaurant models we could nuke to see which was left standing when the dust cleared: "Pronto"—focused on speed and delivery model, "Gusto"—focused on better food quality but more dine-in service, and "Vincenzo's"—a hybrid pizza/sandwich shop that focused on food quality and price points.
We wireframed each model to test our assumptions against our findings and proceeded to stomp the concepts to death like the beach bully takes it to a sandcastle on the beach. We ultimately found the right mix was in combined strengths from each model to develop a final concept that could be fast, high-quality, deliverable and competitive. We also developed the restaurant concept to be easily portable, expandable and franchisable.
To support the values embraced by the model and the heritage of the brand, we developed an brand and identity that was both simple and memorable. We named the restaurant Ciabatta after the family's coveted signature bread recipe. Their positioning statement simply revealed itself to us at this point: "Bread to be the Best."
We developed a menu around the bread that stressed cross-pollenation of similar products to create unique tastes for each dish, thus keeping ordering and inventory down and allowing the one-location enterprise to take advantage of bulk purchasing where possible.
Thinking towards the future of the enterprise, we developed the concept and brand around the principle of someday expanding and franchising Ciabatta without a major rebranding effort involved in doing so.
Vigor Services //
- Restaurant concept development
- Brand naming
- Brand identity design and strategy
- Menu and Cuisine Creation
- Menu design
- Exterior and Interior signage design
- Interior Design
- Uniform and attire design
- Policies and procedures development
Results //
Ciabatta opened their first restaurant location in August, 2007.
