A simple branding test for every new venue. Could you put any name on that door?
This piece was originally shared on LinkedIn in response to recurring conversations with founders and leadership teams around this topic.
I’m publishing it here as part of an ongoing body of thinking around restaurant strategy, market entry, and operational decision-making.
If the answer is yes, the design has failed.
A strong hospitality brand is held together by details you cannot casually swap out.
Scent. Music. Uniform. Lighting.
They shape the experience before a guest consciously registers why the room feels right.
I still remember the jasmine incense at Hakkasan. One moment of scent and you are back in the room.
Music shapes pace and mood before a menu has even been opened.
Lighting changes how food looks, how people look, and how a space feels on camera. Hakkasan designed theirs to hit the plates. A founder recently told me about a restaurant in the US that designed its lighting so everyone looked great on camera, which became one of the most-tagged restaurants on Instagram.
Most guests will never list these things back to you.
But take them away, “value-engineer” them out, or get them wrong, and the brand starts to blur.
Brands are often defined by the details people do not consciously notice.
Since first sharing this, I’ve seen the same issue surface repeatedly — particularly with businesses entering new markets or scaling too quickly. The underlying challenge is rarely strategy itself, but how early decisions constrain execution later.
Andrew Jobes is the founder of Jobes & Co., a Dubai-based advisory working with restaurant and hospitality businesses across the Middle East and international markets.