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T ransitions can be diffcult in any industry – and the restaurant business is no exception. Issues often arise when small and emerging chains set out to grow into multi-unit concepts. Zoës Kitchen, a fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant with Southern infuences, has been rapidly expanding across the country over the past few years. Working together, Venture Construction Co. and Tobin Starr + Partners, a Charlotte-based architecture and design frm, developed a successful set of steps that aided in the transition and helped establish long-lasting systems. While creating a new prototype for the restaurant, the team streamlined the development process by standardizing construction documents and implementing a value engineering initiative. inside Zoës Kitchen's deliberate growth plan Seven simple steps The steps for a successful roll-out fall into three different categories: branding, systems, and a little bit of magic. Branding begins in a concept development phase, during which the client and architect dive into numerous brand discovery exercises to clearly determine the customer base. "Relevancy and understanding your consumer are key to any project," says Steve By Rachel Wasylyk Starr, partner at Tobin Starr + Partners. "You need to create a concept that directly relates to the target customer." From here, it's important to prove your concept through the design. Finally, the overall project will require detailed work to defne, refne and document the brand. Once everything clearly is documented, the systems for a successful business should be put in place. Establishing consistency ensures an ease of fow in construction from one store to another. Creating clear and strong development systems through the use of comprehensive playbooks aids this process. Additionally, generating the infrastructure to support the progression is vital. Finally, it all comes down to a little bit of magic. We've come to learn that this magic is truly a dedication to executing with discipline. september : october 2013 — CommerCial ConstruCtion & renovation 89