Tavistock

Sometimes the ingredients are all there, but they’re not readily visible. Tavistock Food and Beverage Group knew they had a tiger by the tail when they first conceived of ZED451 – a completely novel urban restaurant concept as a major flagship for their portfolio of brands. “But we needed to be able to get people excited about the concept and have them understand it without taking 20 minutes to explain it”, noted Barry Goff, CEO of Tavistock Restaurant Group.

IDEAS created a unifying restaurant story, a completely undiscovered palette of guest offerings, design criteria, menu opportunities, and operational improvements with the Tavistock team. The ZED451 concept continued to evolve from a completely novel restaurant experience into an extendable lifestyle brand through media, consumer products, and other lines.

IDEAS also drove the development of both ZED451’s patron and proprietor culture, complete with distinctive nomenclature and language, programming rites and rituals, and a savvy yet distinctive lexicon for describing the ZED451 experience to aid their pre-launch marketing. The result was a successful opening of the inaugural restaurant in downtown Chicago that continued to exceed expectations in popularity, guest comments, and its financial proforma.

IDEAS success developing the external Zed451 lifestyle brand led to another engagement with The Tavistock Group in codifying an internal design thinking system for its real estate development arm. Facing a growth challenge in moving from a horizontal development focused land company to a vertically focused end-user experience design group, IDEAS helped them discover, map, and codify the unique Design Thinking process that is the Tavistock way of delivering excellence. This included creating an integrated suite of orientation and enculturation tools and content to establish and sustain the new Design Thinking culture; developing consistent protocols for building a design brief, conducting design reviews, decision-making and green-lighting; and sustaining a value-adding environment of collaboration and partnerships across disciplines, areas of expertise and teams.