How does a restaurant chain keep its restaurant brand identity across locations?
A restaurant chain protects its restaurant brand identity across locations by pairing a consistent guest experience with room for each site to have its own character, rather than cloning every branch. Guests who feel they are being steered through an overly rigid service plan lose interest. Identity at each location lives in the staff, the way you communicate and details like music volume, and those details should come through in reviews and online responses too.
Which layers shape the character of a location?
Michiel Huysmans of Teds All Day Brunch identifies three layers: the product offering, the way guests are spoken to and the people on the floor. The structure, meaning the idea of the perfect guest experience, stays central. Around that, each location gets its own interpretation, so the whole feels authentic rather than like a copy. If you don't carry that tone through to review responses and Google Business Profile posts, you undo online what has been built on the floor.
Why does a copy-paste formula backfire?
A branch that is an exact copy of the last one feels like an overly structured service plan. Guests want to feel welcome, not just served correctly.
What role do staff play?
According to Huysmans, staff make the difference: an informal concept only works if team members also behave informally and genuinely in every interaction with guests.
How far do the small details go?
All the way down to the music: at Teds, it would rather be a little too loud than a little too soft. Deliberate choices like that give every site the same vibe without making locations interchangeable.
Everybody and everything has a little bit of Ted's vibe.
Frequently asked questions
How do you combine a fixed service plan with authenticity?
A common approach is to use the service plan as a foundation: what does the ideal guest experience look like, and which steps belong to it. Within that framework, staff get room to behave in their own way. That keeps quality consistent across all locations, while guests never feel they are being walked through a script. The structure stays invisible and the experience feels real.
Why is informal communication hard to scale?
Informal communication depends on people, not manuals. Every new location brings new staff who have to pick up the tone. That is why the concept has to show up at every touchpoint: in the product offering, in the conversation at the table and in the way guests are addressed. A tone that only exists on the menu and not in how staff behave feels forced to guests.
How do you carry a location's identity through to online channels?
The tone guests experience in the restaurant should also come through in your responses to reviews on Google and TripAdvisor and in your Google Business Profile posts. An informal concept that responds stiffly and formally online contradicts itself. It makes sense to define a set tone of voice for each location and use it consistently, including when responses are automated.
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Video transcript
So I think that for us, absolutely crucial is, um, um, is the way that, uh, we try to color a little bit outside the line. So that means that we are really informal, and that means that that needs to work in all aspects of yours, let's say, of your surface. So in product offering, but also in the way that people communicate with you.
So our staffing is absolutely crucial in this. And also to make sure that everything in every location that you visit has its own identity rather than being a complete copy of the last one, because then it really becomes that you feel that you are basically being pulled through, let's say, a too structured service plan, and which we of course have because we offer this whole idea, okay, what would be the perfect guest guest experience. But we also know that it need...
that, that it's really relevant that people feel comfortable and welcomed, and people are, let's say, authentic also in the way that they work with you. So it's really, uh, we really look in all aspects that everybody, everybody and everything has a little bit of Ted's vibe. And that goes from the music being a little bit too loud at our locations rather than to be a little bit too soft, and all those aspects.
There are a lot of little things.