Challenge: How might we help a local and independent restaurant business grow in a notoriously volatile industry?
Summary: Engaging with a neighborhood and community in meaningful ways increases a restaurant’s stability. Investing stakeholders such as employees, vendors, and delivery partners in the neighborhood is critical to the success of a community-centered business model. Our work concluded that this goes beyond traditional community involvement such as volunteering. It includes local visual representation, collaborating with and supporting neighboring businesses, and working directly with employees to uncover workflows that create a productive and fulfilled workplace environment.
Image: Creating a system map of the restaurant industry with the business owner.
Fiorella, a neighborhood Italian restaurant, operates within the highly competitive food industry in San Francisco. Trends and challenges include rising rent and cost of living, food service labor shortage, high staff turnover, increase in food delivery, rise in meal kit delivery services, increased interest in cooking at home, and intense competition in the Italian cuisine space.
Image: Co-creating a definition of what neighborhood means.
After identifying the target challenges and opportunities we spent six months alongside the owner researching and co-creating future marketing strategies specific to each individual Fiorella location.
Image: Conducting ethnographic research during a testing mode.
We shadowed staff members during their shifts, conducted lengthy interviews with team members, and ate a lot of Italian food. Neighborhood was defined as a central component to the identity of Fiorella. Investing in the community in a deep, authentic way is a viable option for Fiorella to be of service to its primary stakeholder, the neighborhood it exists within. Fiorella addresses locality with a strong local visual language with artwork from local designers and artists. Our team further worked to build upon "neighborhood Italian" as a core strength that runs through the business at all levels of marketing. Our team applied business model tools and strategies to define Fiorella’s current business model; conducted research into competitive, innovative business models and practices; and synthesized findings into new communications strategies that will help Fiorella achieve their desired future state within the next five years.