Donatos

It can be tough to make dough in the pizza business. Just look under “pizza” in any local Yellow Pages.

Seeking to cut through that competitive clutter, Donatos Pizza – a 43-year-old regional pizza/subs/salads chain based in Columbus, Ohio – decided it needed to trade up, repositioning itself as a premium alternative in what is mainly a commodity business.

“We wanted to update the Donatos concept, making us more relevant to the lifestyles and demands of our customers and what they want from their pizza experience,” says company spokesman Tom Santor. “But we also wanted the new look to reiterate our company personality, which is bold, fun and passionate.”

Donatos, which runs 180 restaurants in eight states, called on Design Forum (Dayton, Ohio) to help deliver that updated identity. Bill Chidley, Design Forum's chief creative officer, said his team began the project by researching “what it means to be a trade-up brand in what is a very crowded, mature market.”

That effort included conducting dine-alongs at the chain's existing restaurants, and performing in-home visits with customers ordering Donatos pizza for takeout or delivery.

Design Forum concluded that Donatos did indeed have an opportunity to stake out some turf as a premium alternative. “We found that Donatos was getting more credit for having better-quality pizza, subs and salads than most of its competitors, so our job was to create an experiential environment that would better reflect and communicate that fact,” Chidley says. “But because pizza is often an off-premises experience, we also knew those premium cues had to extend beyond the restaurant, to include such things as the packaging and the uniforms worn by the company's delivery drivers.”

A unified visual identity was created that could be used across all consumer touchpoints. “That meant establishing a brand direction that positions Donatos as 'pizza cool-casual,' ” says Chidley.

At the center of that new identity is a redesigned logo, which features the company's signature letter D sitting “nose-up” in an angular box. That new logo gets prominent placement over the front entrance of the 1975-square-foot prototype that Donatos built in the Mill Run complex, in a western suburb of Columbus.

“We wanted the Donatos' identity to blast through visually, so the exterior includes two bright red, angled fa�ades at the entrance and drive-through window,” says Chidley. “We also included black awnings over the windows that bear the 'three Ds' central to Donatos – dine in, delivery and drive up – in easy-to-see white lettering.”

Inside, Donatos went for what Chidley calls a “non-hoseable” environment. “Too many pizza restaurants are so full of plastic, it looks like all you do to clean them is to hose them down,” he explains. “We wanted something with a much more friendly, human feel.”

Consequently, the restaurant's dining area features warm woods and a red and yellow palette with black and metallic accents to add visual drama. To create what designers call a “pizza-centric” environment, quotes such as “pizza is the slice of life” and “pizza served with love nourishes the soul” are scattered throughout the space.

The dining area also features hanging acrylic sheets between the booths that provide both a measure of privacy and bear humorous graphic representations of different ways to slice a pizza. For example, the “pizza makes the world go round” panel shows a globe-shaped pizza cut in latitudinal and longitudinal lines.

The checkout counter is at the rear of the dining space, fronting a pizza-cutting station and an open kitchen area. “The open kitchen provides the restaurant customers with a link to the energy of pizza-making,” says Chidley, “and the cutting station adds a theatrical touch to the environment.”

Thus far, Donatos has built only the one prototype. But that will change in coming months. “This is our growth vehicle going forward,” Santor explains. “We are integrating a number of these design elements into our stores currently under construction or being remodeled, and we will use the prototype for our expansion plans this year and next.”

Client: Donatos Pizzeria, Columbus, Ohio
Tom Krouse, chief concept officer
Jane Grote Abell, coo
Art Prendergast, director, construction
Travis Howard, director, operations development
Janet Sprouse, executive director, menu development
Collin Sanders, coordinator, operations development

Design: Design Forum, Dayton, Ohio
Bill Chidley, chief creative officer
Tom Kowalski, senior design director

Architect: Fisher Group, Dayton, Ohio

General Contractor: RSI Construction Services, Columbus, Ohio

Ceramic tile, floor and wall: Dal-Tile, Dallas

Ceiling Systems: Rulon, Brunswick, Ga.

Fabric Finishes: Maharam, New York

Flooring, Hard Surface: Lonseal, Carson, Calif.

Furniture: LB Empire, Hudson, N.Y.

Seating Concepts, Rockdale, Ill.

Graphics: General Theming Contractors LLC, Columbus, Ohio

Lighting: Besa Lighting Co. Inc., Columbus, Ohio
LBL Lighting, Chicago Heights, Ill.

Metals, Glass and Special Finishes: Chemetal (a div. of The October Co. Inc.), East Hampton, Mass.

Paint: Sherwin Williams, Cleveland
Benjamin Moore, Montvale, N.J.
Plastic Laminates:Formica, Cincinnati
Nevamar Co., Odenton, Md.

Wallcoverings: Marlite, Dover, Ohio

Photography: Michael Houghton, Studiohio, Columbus, Ohio