We have been through the name change thing and have come out without any really drop off in business.
When we took over the store 14 months ago without any prior experience in pizza we made the decision to go for a whole new look, name etc BUT leave the product unchanged.
The store was doing about $7.5 - $8k per week, badly run, average sevice, tired decor, poorly advertised and a very bland designed and printed menu, poor uniform and staff lacking any form of discipline.
We took the step to completely change the name from Currambine Pizza & Pasta to Pizza Pizzazz (Currambine).
As we are in a fairly medium to higher income area we saw the need to lift the image of the place to the expectations of the customers. We installed a new counter and put up walls to hide the kitchen area (except for make bench/ oven area as people like to see their pizza being made), put in new funky chrome and black wicker furniture, re-painted the walls a deep red chilli colour (counter is same red & black) and put staff in new all black uniforms (totally supplied by us - shirts, pants and caps).
Our shirts have the logo on the front and “Pizzazz” in big letters right across the back so every time a staff member turns around people see our name “Pizzazz”. We put “Pizzazz” out where people saw it all the time.
Next was new signage - neon up top and new simple but modern window signage.
Unfortunately all this was done right at the middle of the biggest ever building boom every experience in Australia, in particular Western Australia where we are. The whole exercise took over 6 months to do due to labour shortage in the building trade as well as continual hold ups from our landlord (major shopping centre group across Australia).
We did all this with minimal advertising, only doing a letterbox drop with our new menus with the new logo and colour theme.
Now it is all finished we are experiencing sales around the high $8k - mid $9k and growing every month.
The cost for the name change came out at roughly $30k which included signage ($9k) uniforms ($1.5k) Painting ($1.5k) new internal walls ($4k) furniture ($3k) counter ($3k) printing of menus and fridge magnets ($2k) electrical ($3k) plus other incidentals.
It was a big cost, but badly needed if the business was to go forward.
Everything has started to pay off despite our name being left out of all the telephone directories for 2007.
Would I do it again? Definitely yes!, but not in the middle of a building boom.
It could have been better managed. It could have been better advertised and it could have been better in other aspects.
In the end of the day we made a clean break from the previous ownership (except for their great pizzas which customers tell us are even better now) and his lax attitude to customer service and general overall apathy to everything thanks to too much pot smoking.
Changing the name is only part of the whole picture. There has to be seen to have a whole change in culture and attitude, cleaniness, service and product has to be excellent every time without compromise.
If you are suffering from a bad name, especially one that people can change to a derogatory rhyming one then you need to get out of it real quick smart. People throw sh*t and some of it sticks for ever despite everything you do to change it.
My advise for all it’s worth (even less than J_r0kk’s 2 cents) is go for a name change overhaul, including uniforms, logo, decor etc. If you don’t you will always get that group that will call you Pizza Sh…ty.
Best of luck
Dave