Concept Evolution | Culinary, Brand, Experience

Bringing pizza-delic pleasure to the customer of today.

After over 40 years of serving up fresh stone-baked pizzas with distinct craft and eclectic, psychedelic flair, Mellow Mushroom approached TCE in 2023 to help roadmap its next chapter of growth and evolution. The charge? Create a fast-casual prototype of the historically full-service brand – one that completely reimagines the brand’s relevancy for younger audiences, while proving out a more scalable, higher-ROI operation.

Our central strategic challenge was to balance much-needed simplification and standardization with the unorthodox individuality Mellow is known and loved for. Historically, each unit has been uniquely designed and decorated using local partners and artists. But with such little standardization across the system, the psychedelic brand started to become disjointed and, often, outdated, not to mention expensive to scale. At the same time, the menu offering had spawned several new menu categories – from hoagies to calzones to toasts and beyond – that paled in comparison to the popularity of their core pizzas and wings.

The solution wasn’t to take away operators’ individual freedom of expression, but rather give them a framework for freedom. By bringing the menu and brand back down to the studs, we actually created more room for creativity – resulting in a modernized, fast-casual version of Mellow with all the soul and charm as its legacy units.

Working with the Mellow Mushroom culinary and brand teams, TCE streamlined the menu to highlight its greatest hits – which cleared room for new creative innovations like an exciting new calzone-hoagie hybrid, entree-worthy salads, craveable batched cocktails, soft serve ice cream sundaes, and more. We also partnered with Zebra Global to design the prototype interiors, including a framework for freedom that standardizes key FF&E while leaving room to continue the legacy of using local muralists and artists. 

We also partnered with Zebra Global to design the prototype interiors, including a framework for freedom that standardizes key FF&E while leaving room to continue the legacy of using local muralists and artists. This new prototype is designed to have a more brand own-able aesthetic, with a signature purple overtone and more modern psychedelic motifs. Most notably, the concept is designed for limited service, with guests ordering at a counter in a fast-casual setup, without sacrificing any of the fun-loving hospitality the brand is known for.

Introducing: Mellow Mushroom, fast-casual style. The first unit of this new model is opening in October 2024 in the brand’s hometown of Atlanta, with more to come soon thereafter.