
The Winning Brand is Consistent: Strategies of Old Wild West and Healthy Color
Old Wild West and Healthy Color are two examples of consistent franchising: but what does consistency mean when applied to brands? Let’s find out.
When we think about creating a brand, we often focus on economic, image, logistical, and so on aspects. All correct. However, we often forget that all these factors are connected by a common concept, that of consistency.
Today, I’ll explain what brand consistency means, with two interesting examples.
A Consistent Location
“Be what you seem” is a phrase from Alice in Wonderland and is, surprisingly, also a business lesson. The theme of consistency indeed encompasses all aspects of a business.
Think about the location you choose for your store: it must be located in an area where you know your target audience is. And even for other aspects, such as decor, communication, etc., you must find a correspondence between the public’s need and the product/service you want to offer.
To do this, you must first identify the socio-demographic data of the people you want to communicate with: in simpler terms, the age group, the type of work, whether they are single or in a more or less stable relationship, etc.
You must then study the specific needs of these people and what interests and passions they have: essentially, find specific niches to address, whose desires you know inside out, and then create a consistent proposal (not only as a product/service, but also as a location, layout, communication, mood, etc.).
Two examples will help you understand practically what it means to create a food franchising format consistent with its strategic positioning.
Old Wild West, the Old West Comes Alive Again
Born in 2002 in the province of Udine, Old Wild West is one of the longest-running and most successful fast-casual chains in Italy, thanks above all to its distinctive style.
‘Fast casual’ refers to a fast-food restaurant that is qualitatively superior to classic fast food.
Old Wild West represents one of the first examples of a then innovative concept that has since gained ground: foodtainment, offering not only fast-casual dining but places to eat and have fun, in a movie-like atmosphere.
The chain’s target audience includes both families with children and the classic pub consumers, namely teenagers and young adults. They all seek not only good food but also an experience to live, in an informal and fun environment.
The focus on families is evident in all the chain’s processes. As soon as they arrive, children receive crayons and a sheet to color, and the children’s menu includes a game to entertain them. This way, they can have fun, giving parents the chance to relax. Their fun is also linked to another aspect: the possibility of eating peanuts (American, to be consistent with the brand image), a way to have an aperitif and still engage children in another activity.
Old Wild West, with its style that reproduces the old inns (the famous saloons) of the Old West, offers at the same time an exotic and familiar atmosphere: exotic because it evidently recalls the lands beyond the Mississippi River in the nineteenth century; familiar because we have seen those lands in thousands of movies and have thus entered our collective imagination.
A distinctive atmosphere consistent with its audience, as explained by Daniele Crucil, marketing director of Cigierre, the group that owns Old Wild West:
“The perfect consistency of image and communication is fundamental for our chain. In all the Old Wild Wests in Italy, our customers know that they will find the same fun atmosphere and the same quality. Our secret is standardization and controls which, executed punctually, allow us to maintain our standards at the highest levels.”
Healthy Colour, Adding Color to Healthy Food
From a chain with almost twenty successful years behind it to a new brand, recently launched in Milan, with two locations in Rome and the fourth opening in Naples, founded by the famous rapper Sfera Ebbasta, footballer Andrea Petagna, and designer Marcelo Burlon who later joined. It’s Healthy Color, a healthy fast food, which focuses on healthy and high-quality food, targeting a young audience (Generation Z and Millennials, but not only) who, especially in cities, are much more attentive than average to eating healthy and sustainability, in a trend now called health-conscious.
However, Healthy Color’s real innovation lies precisely in the consistency between message, location, and products. The concept of “Color” in the brand is immediately reflected in all its distinctive factors: from the logo itself to the decor, from the packaging to the dishes, which are lively and colourful.
The menu is extensive and varied, healthy and precisely colourful.
In addition to food, it’s the strong brand identity that remains impressed, declined in every detail between interior design, uniforms, packaging, and communication, which bears the signature of the Zon Productions agency. “On brand identity, we’ve done important work to ensure that the format is not only recognizable but noticeably unique,” says Oliver Zon, founder of Zon Productions. The names of the dishes themselves recall this vivacity. The poké, a Hawaiian dish that has become popular lately, represents one of the most interesting and creative aspects from this point of view. Both for their preparation, as they are revisited in a Mediterranean key, and for the names themselves, which recall the dominant colour of the dish: it’s called Yellow if prepared with curry, Pink if with tuna, Black or White depending on whether it contains black or white rice. The combination of colours in the dish then arises from the chef’s inspiration, which in turn inspires the name, in a message once again consistent with the brand’s values.
The restaurant’s colours convey positive energy, and eating healthy, often associated with a sad atmosphere or bland products, is charged with a triumph of colours and takes on a new meaning.