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Sizzler gets a redesign, but keeps the salad bar

As one of the first fast casual restaurants, Sizzler helped define suburban dining. The company is doubling down on that legacy with its new redesign.

Sizzler gets a redesign, but keeps the salad bar

[Photo: courtesy Sizzler]

BY Nate Berg3 minute read

Sizzler patrons know what to expect. The restaurant chain, with about 70 locations across the U.S., offers a casual dining experience, modest prices paid up front, and, perhaps most famously, an all-you-can-eat salad bar.

“It’s really the centerpiece of our restaurant,” says Robert Clark, chief growth officer for Sizzler USA.

[Photo: courtesy Sizzler]

So when the company decided to undertake a redesign that will roll out to all of its locations, it wanted to make sure that any refresh wouldn’t take away what customers expect from a Sizzler, no matter where they are.

“We wanted to ensure system uniformity,” Clark says. “If you went into a Sizzler in Corona, California, or you walked into a sizzler in Flagstaff, Arizona, you might feel like you’ve walked into the same building.”

[Photo: courtesy Sizzler]

This incremental approach to a redesign reflects the needle Sizzler is trying to thread in 2023. With fast casual in-restaurant dining still recalibrating after the no-go years of the pandemic, many brands have shifted course to the kind of digital-first, in-and-out efficiency of touchless ordering that happens on a customer’s phone rather than at a counter. While Sizzler is also seeing huge growth in its online ordering through third party services, the bread and butter of the company is people coming in to sit inside the restaurant and butter their own bread. There’s no app that can take the place of reaching out across a salad bar to tong a few more croutons onto a plate. This redesign is trying to be just new enough to feel fresh for a restaurant that first opened in 1958, but not so different that customers don’t understand how to use it.

For restaurant design studio TNI Design, which led the redesign, this was much more than a cookie-cutter design process. Because even though the brand wanted familiarity, almost every one of the company’s locations, either internally owned or franchised, is in a differently sized and shaped building. TNI Design’s plans had to work across the casual dining architecture spectrum, from 1970s mini-mall locations to brand new builds. It also had to balance bringing new vibrancy and efficiency to the restaurants without turning people away forma place where they know what they’re going to get.

“We’re designing to appeal to all demographics and age groups. Families, younger people, more senior guests, they’re all going to be comfortable there,” says Robert Ancill, CEO and creative officer at TNI Design. “We were very careful in the design process not to alienate any customer. We didn’t go crazy with colors or becoming modern all of a sudden. Sizzler really knows where they want to be in that pitch to their demographics and customers.”

The new design is more of a fresh coat of paint than a rebuild, with TNI Design adding new finishes, tile flooring, and reclaimed wood accents throughout. A prominent fireplace now sits under a big Sizzler logo near the front counter, and digital boards now display the menu. more high-seats have been added and some of the four-seater booths have been expanded out to hold six people. The first restaurant to be redesigned, in the Southern California city of Corona, just opened earlier this month. A few more will follow this year, and every location in the Sizzler chain will have remodels underway by April 2024.

[Photo: courtesy Sizzler]

Most of the remodels are fairly surface level, but some locations will be seeing more structural changes. The company has found itself needing to accommodate the unanticipated growth of delivery orders being fulfilled by third party providers like Grubhub and Doordash. “Since the pandemic third party business has just been crazy. It’s 15 to 20% of our total business,” says Clark. “The challenge we have is that our buildings weren’t really designed with third party in mind, to get the delivery drivers in there to get the stuff. There’s clearly a big opportunity in those stores that do good third party business for us to enhance that.”

Every location will get one important upgrade: a refreshed salad bar. TNI Design has redesigned a more airy space above the bar, with hanging planters and food-spotlighting pendant lamps. In the bar itself utilitarian stainless steel crocks and trivets have been replaced with clean white surfaces and a black holding area for the multiple pots of food and condiments. New surfaces and glass will also be added to the sneezeguards.

[Photo: courtesy Sizzler]

But while the salad bar will look new, Clark says the overall shape and central location—Sizzler standards for 30 years—won’t change. At least not for now. “If we were to build a new Sizzler today, we would build a new salad bar,” he says. “What’s the next salad bar look like? That will be the next iteration of where we go.”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nate Berg is a staff writer at Fast Company, where he writes about design, architecture, urban development, and industrial design. He has written for publications including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, Wired, the Guardian, Dwell, Wallpaper, and Curbed More


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