Port of Subs freshens stores, fine-tunes its message

Every seven to 10 years, all retailers should take a hard look at the design elements that comprise both the interior and exterior of their businesses.

Even if the business seems to be doing well, it may be time to do some tweaking.

That's the advice of Mathew Dunning, director of marketing for Seattle-based M3, which has recently completed an interior architectural redesign of Reno-based Port Of Subs.

The sandwich chain is embarking on a plan to boost the franchising of its 140 outlets with a goal of more than 200 stores within the next three to four years.

The architectural prototype of what all new stores will look like is found at the new Smiths Shopping Center at South Meadows Parkway and Double R Boulevard.

The new location features a new corporate logo, new colors, a redesigned menu system, and significant attention drawn to what the company believes it is its strongest selling point all the meat is sliced fresh to order.

"It's what we've been doing for nearly 30 years," says Dino Medina, Port Of Subs' vice president of development.

Medina is familiar with the work of M3, a division of Messenger Sign in Seattle.He hired the interior design consultant company a number of years ago when he was with Papa Murphy's chain of take-and-bake pizza stores.

"I was familiar with their work with Starbucks,Nordstrom and Eddie Bauer," Medina says."Prior to working with Papa Murphy's, M3 had never done a full interior changeover for a restaurant.

But I was impressed with their abilities.

So,when I left Papa Murphy's and came here to Port Of Subs, I wanted them to take a look at what we were doing and tell us what, if anything,we needed to do to generate more sales and improve customer satisfaction."

M3's Dunning said Port Of Subs management gave his firm carte blanche to look at every aspect of its outlets.

"Retailers need to continually be aware of the importance of its brand identity,"he says."We thought the logo could be improved.We thought the color scheme could be updated.And we developed the signage that can be put into place in new stores on a turn-key basis."

Because customer expectations and trends change frequently,Dunning says retailers need to understand and respond to those trends.

The difficulty, he says, is understanding the difference between a trend and a fad that may be short-lived.With the Port Of Subs project, Dunning believes the company has responded accurately with a mix that blends a retro look with a new, fresh look.

"Sometimes,we will discover that a retailer has a cacophony of elements that evolved over time,"he says."Our job is to create a look that takes the best of all those elements and blend them together.We believe retail establishments should take a hard look at their businesses every seven to 10 years in order to keep a fresh look that customers can enjoy."

Dunning said Port Of Subs supplied his firm with its most standard floor plan that has been developed by the company's primary architect,Wilkus Architects of Minneapolis.

Wilkus is the firm that did the basic architectural layout for the Papa Murphy's pizza chain outlets.

The strongest sales feature for Port Of Subs, however, is that the customer knows the meat is not prepackaged as it is at some competitors.

"That was the easy part," says Dunning."We took the sliced fresh menu and incorporated it into this new prototype store."

The new design ties directly into Port Of Subs' roots with a nostalgic looking "master slicer chef " character and the original Port Of Subs blue color.

The sandwich chain's marketing director, Kristin Cronhardt, says

"We have stayed true to our beginnings by continuing to make each sandwich fresh to order as the customer looks on."

She says the company conducted brand positioning research in 2004 and it showed the company's core attribute to be its "sliced fresh" image.

But the company is not content to stand still.

"One of my jobs is to visit our stores, to go in, sit down and watch our staff and our customers," says Medina."Everyone is in a hurry for lunch, but in the afternoon and early evening, there seems to be a more relaxed atmosphere.And that's good for our business."