California-headquartered Dine Equity franchises IHOP (International House of Pancakes) and Applebee’s restaurants, and it undertook an 18–month–long project to reconcile consumer demand, franchisee recommendations and the company ethos, which resulted in the relaunch of both its brands.
Dine Equity, president — international, Daniel Del Olmo visited Dubai to reveal the plan to all its franchise partners, and says it received an incredible reaction.
“The 360–degree brand evolution plan is based on the relaunch of both of our brands; both have undergone logo changes, and with that comes a 360–degree evolution of all the touch points surrounding the brands, including, but not limited to, new creative positioning, new restaurant designs, new culture, new uniform, and culinary innovation for our brands,” he says.
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CREATIVE POSITIONING
Olmo says the studies conducted revealed that the brands lacked emotional connection with its customers, and were not as distinctive as they could be. It was more of a functional relationship than experiential, which needed to be worked on.
This led to a new creative strategy and positioning for the brands. “We have created two really unique and different positionings — in case of Applebee’s, the positioning is that there is always a reason to celebrate. No matter how small an occasion you may have, Applebee’s provides the perfect backdrop for your celebrations.
“In the case of IHOP, we have been around since 1958 and guests have told us that they feel happy when they visit IHOP. We combined the two to create the notion that we were spreading happiness since 1958, which we believe is a strong positioning.”
Consequently, the way the new restaurants will look, the way the front-of-house staff will be dressed and serve customers are said to be significantly different from current practices.
Previously, a franchisee was required to have a space that was at least 600m2 for IHOP, and 500m2 for Applebee’s. Based on the feedback and recommendations from the franchisees, it has been brought down to 200m2 to 500m2, and all that is in between.
“This provides flexibility for our partners because now they can find sites and locations where there is the right type of traffic for our brand, and where we couldn’t go in the past because of the limitation of the minimum size.”
FOOD THEATRE
Another interesting amendment in the SOPs is the reduction of cooking space. The restaurants were required to allocate 40% of its space to the kitchen, which has now been brought down to 25%. This makes more room for the seating area, and revenues, making it a capital–efficient model.
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