The Challenge
Our brief was to create concepts for five full-service restaurants, three quick serves, four stands, three kiosks and ten mobile units. A key point for Merlin was ensuring the balance of the food propositions matched the customer flow and theming around the park.
Despite the obvious time difference, working hours / days and legal codes we were up for the challenge of ensuring Merlin UK and the local teams had complete transparency over everything happening both in the Middle East and the UK.
What We Did
We started by establishing the customer demographic, the layout of which attractions were in which areas and how these were themed.
We then reviewed feedback from other LEGOLAND parks we have worked on then set about developing our food mapping process. We plotted out the best locations for each of the propositions based on the clusters, heavy footfall areas and projected dwell time in each location. These included all the theme park staples like healthy and handheld food, chicken, burgers and pizzas to give visitors the right breadth of choice. Everything we did was localised for the Dubai market.
With the project team, we then designed the back of house areas starting with the projected capacity to establish how many people each proposition could service from the allocated space. This exercise established how much equipment we would need. We then planned the front of house areas mapping out how much room we’d need based on the volume of people from our capacity modelling.
We then supported the equipment tender process, supported the menu development work and helped recruit an executive chef. We were also required to create marketing collateral around the food concepts, including 180 signage positions around the park (call to actions, path to purchase, up-selling and promotional offers). All translated of course!
To help manage this process, we built Merlin an international signage website. This enables their teams to access signage and artwork any time, any day from anywhere in the world whatever their location.
