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Bertucci's: 2Ovens

PROJECT

CLIENT

Bertucci's

SERVICE

  • CX+

INDUSTRY

  • Retail

Continuum and Bertucci's considered Millennials' dining habits and developed a new restaurant concept.

Bertucci’s approached Continuum to help them cook up a solution to their “Millennial problem,” without completely straying from their brand identity.

Challenge

The dining landscape is changing rapidly, and has been for some time. What's driving this change? Millennials. They’re a generation that loves to eat at restaurants, with 53% going out to eat at least once a week (compared to 43% of the general population). As of 2015, these frequent diners were spending an average of $174 per month on restaurant dining.

Major restaurant chains are racing to engage this influential generation, and Bertucci’s wanted to join the race. The laid-back Italian restaurant chain, although well-known, was struggling to reach a younger demographic that saw it as a familial restaurant they associated with childhood, and not a place to gather with friends. Bertucci’s approached Continuum to help them cook up a solution to their “Millennial problem,” without completely straying from their brand identity.

Awards

  • Good Design Award 

  • Packaging Graphics, Finalist

  • HOW Promotion & Marketing Design, Merit Award

  • Spark Awards, Experience, Finalist

RESEARCH & INSIGHTS

Brand Honesty

Well-known brands need to be reinvented in an authentic way. Although Bertucci’s is a strong name, it resonates with Millennials as a restaurant from their childhood—the place that let them play with pizza dough during dinner. Millennials didn’t feel like there was a spot for them at the traditional Bertucci’s table. In order to get the attention of this new demographic, we needed to give them their own table. We decided that a new restaurant with a new name—but with the same values as Bertucci’s—would freshen up the brand and give it a younger appeal. The name needed to be catchy, and speak to a unique dining experience with fresh, oven-cooked food.

RESEARCH & INSIGHTS

A Fresher Experience

With a younger demographic comes changing priorities. What do Millennials want? We asked them. Big selling points are freshness and transparency. Open kitchens, where both the chef and the ingredients are visible, instill confidence in the establishment and the product. Shareable plates of food promote social dining experiences, where people can gather and easily split dishes at a reasonable cost. Specialization is also important. If you’re known for your pizza, do pizza well—Millennials have no shortage of choice, and aren’t looking for all restaurants to be all things at once.

Our research led us to create a menu that draws people in with the promise of fresh, sharable creations, all of which are cooked in one of two large brick ovens. The space is open, and diners can watch chefs prepare their food. There is a more extensive drink menu, with fun cocktails and a variety of beers and wines. It’s a big, theatrical experience with a small footprint. And we know how much Millennials value experiences. More than 78% of Millennials would choose to spend money on an experience—like a concert or cruise—as opposed to material possessions. A restaurant where you pay for food and also get an experience? The total package.

RESEARCH & INSIGHTS

Appeal to Modes

Not every Millennial eats in the same way. We identified different dining personas—from the “Social Guy” to the “Homebody”—and various behavioral modes of eating. Whether you’re a social eater out on a date, or a homebody looking to work over lunch, our concept needed to be appealing. We journey-mapped the entire experience and created storyboards to envision how Millennials would be served in both big social groups and as individuals.

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Solution

We worked with all levels of the Bertucci’s organization to make a full-scale restaurant, and designed everything from the tasty, sharable menu, to the uniforms and logo, to the pizza packaging, to the space and service model.

We built an entire full-scale prototype restaurant, where we could test our service experience designs. We ensured that the space was welcoming, that the chef could move easily, and that there was an open, friendly atmosphere. Each of the two ovens—one for cooking vegetables, and one for meat and pizza—is visible, so customers feel connected to the food and the chef.

In collaboration with the chef, the kitchen manager, and a team of finance experts, we created a smaller, more curated menu, with easily shared plates and a wider variety of alcoholic beverages. We maximized menu capabilities by creatively repurposing ingredients. Serving a pizza with peppers? Why not add peppers to another dish to maximize ingredients? Knowing what price points would be feasible for the 2Ovens business was crucial to designing an accessible menu for customers.

Thanks to our iterative prototyping process, we were able to make rapid, significant improvements, and to move quickly from concept sketches to reality.

Results

The journey from concept to reality was incredibly fast, with a mere ten-month turnaround time. The first 2Ovens concept restaurant opened in December 2012 in Massachusetts, and exceeded the organization’s financial goals.

In July 2013, 2Ovens was featured in a Forrester Report called, “Customer Experience Innovation Demystified: Frame Innovations With Customer Needs, Business Model, And Brand."

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