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Virtual Restaurant Experience

Inspiring Pizza Hut franchisees to upgrade their restaurants with an immersive VR experience

Inspired by our award-winning KFC Restaurant of the Future project, we worked with Pizza Hut to create an immersive VR experience for their franchisees, showcasing the potential of upgrading their restaurants. The VR experience has been an unrivalled success, doubling expressions of interest from franchise owners. 

The immersive VR experience combines stereoscopic 3D modelling with interactive features and an audio guide, showcasing how restaurant owners should update their premises. 

Used at trade and franchise shows around the world, the viewer takes the customer’s journey from ordering to eating, letting them see and experience what a new restaurant could mean for the future of their business. 

Yum! Brands owns KFC and Pizza Hut, and having worked with both before, they approached Circus and I-AM with a problem. 

Hospitality is getting harder and the demands of modern customers continue to evolve. They expect fresh surroundings and a seamless experience. Otherwise, they’ll spend their money elsewhere. That falls on restaurant owners to update their restaurants. 

But how do you convince them?

Flat PDFs, lifeless images and boring copy can only do so much to inspire. We’ve seen it before and been there before. They’ll get a glance and maybe an approving nod before being forgotten. 

When capital investment is involved, owners need confidence and excitement to truly buy in. We were tasked with creating a VR experience that Yum! could use at franchise events to sell this vision of the future to owners, encouraging them to invest in their locations.

We made that happen.

Using a VR headset at a trade stand, the experience opens with a top-down 3D model of I-AM’s new restaurant concept before moving into the building itself. Users can order their food, sit down to eat, or take their pizza away, all while exploring the space in ultra-detailed stereoscopic imagery. 

In the different locations around the space, animated labels and a voice-over call out different points of interest, highlight their benefits and explain their features. To close it out, an embedded video animation shows the design concept working in different-sized spaces and various locations. 

Whether they operate a Pizza Hut inside a shopping centre, a motorway services or a busy high street, they truly experience the depth and scale of the restaurant. Feel how the colours, lighting and furniture work together. Understand what it looks like with customers inside. And see how the new design works operationally.

The whole space is brought to life.

Working with 3D renders and architectural models brings challenges. They’re designed to be seen from a static location and with flat lighting. But when creating for VR, every detail is exposed in 360 degrees. All surfaces and joints need to match from every angle. Floors need to meet walls correctly, and light needs to behave realistically.

We worked closely with I-AM to make the existing models pixel-perfect. Stereoscopic imaging was used to create depth and highlight the spatial relationships between objects and people, making the room feel real.

The results?

Yum! were delighted with our creation. As were the franchise owners and managers. Pizza Hut have doubled conversions and expressions of interest when using the VR experience. Business owners are investing in their premises and giving customers what they want.

 

“This VR experience provides a state-of-the-art, hands-on way for people to explore the ‘Pizza Joy’ environment and completely grasp how this new concept will revolutionise the customer experience. It’s an exciting demonstration of how design and technology can come together to create compelling and informative tools for business and brand innovation.”

Pete Champion, Group Partner and Managing Director at I-AM

If you have an exciting project to bring to life, contact us today to find out how Circus can help.

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