Menu Makeovers and Restaurant Rebranding

Mels The Original American Diners' Menu Makeover

Where Were You in '62?

In 1962 I was four, but when the movie American Graffiti was released in 1973, I was just coming of age. So the movie was a hit with me. I would daydream about cruising to the local drive-in, sipping shakes and munching fries.

If you haven't seen the movie, well, you've probably been under a rock for some time, but it's about a group of teenage kids spending one last night together after high school. And their local hangout is a place called Mels Original American Diners. In the movie, the restaurant is actually referred to as Mel's Drive-In, but in real life it's Mels The Original.

Fast forward to late winter 2010, when I got a call from a distributor representative asking me to reach out to Don Yakel, one of the owners of Mels restaurants. The rep said Mel's was looking for a menu makeover and some restaurant rebranding tips.

When I talked with Don, my eagerness was probably as obvious as a drooling Labrador waiting for biscuit, but he didn't let on that he could tell. Instead, Don outlined what he was looking for. Like many restaurant operators, he had been designing his own menu with the help of a local printer. That meant writing copy, laying out the menu, adding graphics and distributing the menu to multiple locations.

Don's first restaurant rebranding priority was to make his menu look more in line with the movie, incorporating graphic elements that had been used on the album cover and movie posters. He also wanted the style and look of the various menus to be more uniform, so there would be a family resemblance and branding uniformity, rather than a hodgepodge of menus all unrelated to one another.

Maximizing Mels Dayparts

Many of the Mels restaurants are open 24 hours, so to take advantage of the differing dayparts, Mels has a number of menus that are used at various times during the day. The main menu is used most of the day and includes breakfast, lunch and dinner items. Because the lunch-hour crowd is more interested in getting in and out quickly, Mels has a lunch express menu that features a more limited offering designed to concentrate on transaction speed. Guests can order off the main menu at lunch as well, but the lunch specials menu is added from 11:00 a.m. until 1:30 p.m.

After 11:00 p.m. Mels staff stops offering items that won't hold well during slow periods, so there is also a late-night menu that covers the midnight to early-morning business. Beyond that, there is also a dessert menu and a carryout menu. The rebranding challenge was to make all of these menus look like they are from the same restaurant and still make them different enough so they don't get confusing.

Photography or Illustrations?

Don had a good idea about which items he wanted to feature and highlight on his menu, so the discussion quickly moved to the pros and cons of illustrations versus photography.

For the most part, I'm a bigger fan of photography if it is done well, because it offers a better likeness of the food and can dramatically increase sales of items in photos. But in this case, we wanted to work with the branding and graphics that had been established by the American Graffiti movie that were all illustrated, so we decided to use matching food illustrations.

Don supplied a series of snapshots of the items he wanted to feature, and I hired Mario Noche, an illustrator and art director whom I have known and worked with for many years to mimic the style of the film graphics.

When using photography or illustrations for a menu, it is essential to make sure the quality of the images enhances rather than detracts from the items. From personal experience, I know that a bad photo or illustration can have a negative impact on the sales of an item featured. Also, keep in mind that with food photography, everyone is a critic. We've all eaten food and seen what good food looks like, and even though we may not know why a food item looks bad, we will shy away from it if it doesn't look right.

Here are a couple of restaurant rebranding tips. First, when shooting photography, use natural light rather than trying to light the food yourself. And do not rely on florescent lights in a foodservice kitchen, as they will make your food look cold and flat. Place the plate of food by a window, especially on a cloudy day. The natural light from a window will make the food look both natural and appetizing.

For illustrations, use a professional illustrator. Do not rely on your cousin or nephew unless they are professional illustrators and have worked with food before. Instead, find an illustrator who has a professional portfolio and offer him or her the assignment with an up-front amount you are willing to pay for the project. If the illustrator rejects the assignment, you can always counter or ask him or her to offer an estimate or to provide a referral for another illustrator. But by all means, try not to act offended if the price wanted by the illustrator seems out of line to you. It's the illustrator's time and expertise you're soliciting, and that comes at a price. You may grow your business in time, and the price may not seem so bad in the future. But if you've offended the illustrator, he or she will be less likely to work with you or refer you to an associate.

A Girl on Skates

I remember buying the American Graffiti LP as a teenager and admiring the illustration of the girl in black spandex on the cover almost as much as the cool old cars. During the restaurant rebranding process, we wanted to use that illustration on the cover of the dessert and main menus, but the illustration sample had been done so long ago it was an airbrush illustration that had been scanned. Because we needed to update the foods on the tray she was holding, and we wanted her to match the other illustration style, we decided to start fresh with a new illustration altogether.

We started the rebranding illustration assignment with the girl to help establish the overall look of the style we wanted, and to make sure the client would be satisfied using a new, more contemporary process. Because the new illustrations were being developed on the computer rather than with an airbrush on illustration board, our concern was that the new illustrations might look more crisp and edgy rather than soft and fluid.

It's always a little risky when recommending a fresh approach to a beloved image that has been used as trade dress for more than three decades. If Don didn't like it, I would be out the commission for the first illustration, as it has been my experience that most clients don't want to pay for anything they don't like. In this case it was even more risky because we not only had the image of the girl on skates to contend with, but also the first run at the food.

Fortunately, Don was very happy with how the rebranding illustrations turned out, so we commissioned the rest of the drawings. There were 10 drawings total including the tray twice – once for dessert and once for the dinner assortment.

As a side note, while illustrations don't pull quite as hard as professional photographs, they are a bargain by comparison. Consider that a good food photographer will have an assistant, a food stylist and an art director on a shoot for several days, while a professional illustrator will mostly work independently. When commissioning illustrations, though, it is helpful to have a professional art director help arrange the illustrations. In this way you will get a better and more useful image.

Also, when working with a photographer or illustrator for your restaurant, make sure you ask up-front about the usage rights to the images. If you don't have unlimited rights to the images in writing, the law almost always favors the artist. What that means is, if you don't get ownership of the finished creative in writing, you may only be able to use the images once or for a limited time. And while that may seem counterintuitive, copyright laws do not favor you as the purchaser of a creative process, but rather they are written to protect the artist.

Restaurant Rebranding and Menu Engineering is Nothing Without Good Design

At the risk of being redundant, I'll quote Thomas Watson of IBM: Good design is good business. I've used that quote so many times that if he were alive I'd feel guilty and probably bake him a cake to make amends.

The problem is how do you know if your restaurant rebranding design is good? Who's to say what good design even is? These are pertinent questions, and saying: "I know it when I see it" is a copout. This is why you hire someone to help you with your creative process. Then get out of their way and let them do their job. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be involved in the rebranding process, but it does mean you should allow the creative talent you've hired to make many of the critical design decisions about your menu.

So many times restaurant operators try to cut corners and save money on their menu and restaurant marketing. And in the end they pay much more in missed opportunities and lower customer appreciation reflected in lower check averages as a consequence of penny pinching up-front.