Image Credit : Photos by Terence Chin
Illustration by Lee Hopkinson
Project Overview
CONTEMPORARY AND INVITING, THE NEW KFC FAST-CASUAL RESTAURANT CONCEPT CATERS TO YOUNG URBANITES.
KFC has joined the current trend of fast-casual restaurants and created a new concept store offering a more varied menu of burgers, burritos and salads to capture the young urban crowd.
The Great Indoors teamed with branding and design agency, Designworks to deliver a holistic brand experience and spatial design.
Warm timber, black industrial metal, concrete and highlights of the KFC red brand colour combine with hyper modern graphics to create an enticing environment.
The success of the new store has seen the concept expand into other urban centres across Australia.
Project Commissioner
Kentucky Fried Chicken Pty Ltd
Project Creator
The Great Indoors and Designworks
Team
The Great Indoors: Interior design and customer experience
Lee Hopkinson, Director
Dan James, Designer
Cassandra Gleeson, Designer
Designworks: Branding and graphics
Clair Van Veen, General Manager
Kasia Wydrowski, Creative Director
Geoff Courtman, Designer Director
Sara Catts, Account service
Project Brief
KFC commissioned The Great Indoors and Designworks to create a new fast-casual restaurant with counter service to capture the young urban professional crowd.
The first store was to be located in Parramatta, an area which offered the correct demographic for testing the new concept and also sited a number of immediate fast-casual competitors.
Project Innovation/Need
MODERN INDUSTRIAL STYLE
KFC’s new menu is designed to appeal to a younger professional audience. The interior expresses this direction, utilising industrial and warm materials of plywood across tabletops and architectural framework overhead where fast-casual meets urban cafe.
Wall claddings feature plywood panelling, charcoal-painted corrugated metal and concrete-colour render.
The intense red KFC brand colour is used sparingly in unexpected ways: red grout to counterfront; powder-coated stool bases, ceiling beams and pendant lights.
The storefront is welcoming, opening to the street, where customers sit within the fold up timber-framed windows.
Graphics feature stencilled, clipped billboard messages balanced with smart message indicators for ‘free wi-fi’ and ‘phone/laptop charge points’.
Materials; Earthy, warm, honest, natural and non-painted surfaces.
FOOD EXPERIENCE
Customers order and pay, then watch the meal prepared ‘salad bar’-style. This draws the customer along a ‘make line’ to pick-up point deeper instore and creates opportunities for KFC to present the theatre of creating the meal across their new menu.
Customers can call on old favourites like ‘zinger burger’ and ‘BLT twister’ or have options to choose: 1) Meal/burger/wrap/bowl; 2) Chicken seasoned/grilled; 3) Flavour BBQ/chilli etc.
There is a quick-style menu on offer and a new desert of ‘frozen custard’.
Design Challenge
The design challenges included:
– The development of a new counter service and equipment that would serve to showcase the making of the food to customers, which was a different approach to existing stores;
– Refining a desired look to meet the budgetary constraints; and
– Refining the balance of the core brand colour with a new materials palette.
Sustainability
Utilising sustainable materials was very important to connecting with the desired market and was achieved through the use of:
– sustainably sourced plywood timber the walls, furniture and ceiling beams; and
– reusing the existing concrete flooring.
Interior Design - Hospitality
This award celebrates innovative and creative building interiors, with consideration given to space creation and planning, furnishings, finishes, aesthetic presentation and functionality. Consideration also given to space allocation, traffic flow, building services, lighting, fixtures, flooring, colours, furnishings and surface finishes.
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