A Strange Eulogy for A Hometown Anti-Hero

Last week, the owners of Steak & Ale and Bennigans unexpectedly announced that their restaurants would be shutting down for good. These pioneers in casual dining have had close ties to the Dallas design community for over 30 years.

For three decades, Steak & Ale and Bennigan’s have been a reli­able source of sub­ur­bia decor across the coun­try. These two strip mall land­marks made the ideas of fran­chised casual dining and themed con­cept restau­rants main­stream. It seems impos­si­ble to imag­ine now, but there was a time when every restau­rant was actu­ally built and run by people that rep­re­sented the cul­ture of the food and drinks being served. We affec­tion­ately refer to that time as “the good old days.”

Dallas Icons

Through their long reign as cham­pi­ons of con­ve­nient mid-​priced dining and faux cul­tural expe­ri­ences, these two restau­rants were tied in one way or another to the Dallas area. As they expanded, they pre­sented an inter­est­ing oppor­tu­nity to the local design com­mu­nity. Because they com­manded an empire of loca­tions, they were able to deliver some­thing few other restau­rants ever had: a big budget.

The Rise to Power

When the ball started rolling in the late 70s, the own­er­ship group wisely decided that if they were going to sell these restau­rants made from cookie cut­ters they needed to make the cook­ies look great. The logos look dated now, but up against main stream restau­rants of the time, they were extremely pol­ished and had an unmis­tak­able air of pro­fes­sion­al­ism. Even today, you can see they have a great sense of bal­ance and excel­lent craft in typog­ra­phy. After the parent com­pany for the restau­rants moved to the Dallas area, much of the addi­tional design work was done by The Richards Group and their design bou­tique RBMM.

It didn’t take long for the word to get out that man­u­fac­tur­ing restau­rants on a mass scale was a great way to make a ton of money, even if you didn’t know much about cook­ing or cul­ture. All you needed was a unique con­cept, and herds of wide-​eyed masses would come run­ning. All of these restau­rants hired their own high-​end design­ers and the arms race was on.

The Free Market Strikes Back

In the spirit of free market Dar­win­ism, Bennigan’s and Steak & Ale again turned to our local design com­mu­nity for a fresh iden­tity that would muscle them back on the gravy train. This time, Dallas design firm Den­nard and Lacy were asked to make these old thor­ough­breds race worthy again. The task was much tougher this time. In the 70’s simply look­ing pro­fes­sional made them a lone super­power. Now, every chain restau­rant con­cept had their own army of design­ers work­ing to make them look like the pret­ti­est girl at the ball. I think the updated iden­ti­ties look pretty good, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the chal­lenge they faced. The fact is, high-​end design for con­cept restau­rants had become a zero-​sum gain. It’s simply some­thing you have to do to stay even with every­one else. In that regard, the new iden­ti­ties put them back in the game.

The Denary and Lacy redesign for Ben­ni­gans is a noble effort, but with so much com­pe­ti­tion, updat­ing the exist­ing brand could only hope to achieve a level play­ing field with sim­i­lar resturants. Ultimately, it’s tough for a typ­i­cal cus­tomer to see much dif­fer­ence in the new look, so the over­all impres­sion of Ben­ni­gans is left unchanged.

The new iden­tity for Steak & Ale was much fresher. They aban­doned most of the design, color, and archi­tec­ture from the pre­vi­ous con­cept. Ordi­nar­ily, com­pletely chang­ing a brand is risky busi­ness. How­ever, Denard and Lacy wisely rec­og­nized that in the chain restau­rant game, newer is better. In fact, it would be easy to mis­take the new Steak & Ale as a com­pletely dif­fer­ent restau­rant. I really like the strat­egy behind the brand, and I love the design. This is one of the only restau­rant logos that is truly mem­o­rable and still classy. Unfor­tu­nately, this was just a con­cept store. Most Steak & Ale loca­tions stayed the same. This restu­rant had some many forces mounted against them, I’m not sure this design could have saved them. But it cer­tianly would have been a big plus in their column.

The End of An Era

Alas, times are tough, and Gen X is get­ting older. This gen­er­a­tion values authen­tic­ity above all other things when they make pur­chas­ing deci­sions. The idea of fake cul­ture worked great for the leisure loving baby boomers, but it doesn’t play so well now. So expan­sion, a bad econ­omy, and a dwin­dling cus­tomer base led to bank­ruptcy. Despite the Dallas design com­mu­ni­ties best efforts, these two mighty empires have taken their last trip to the salad bar.