Growing a pandemic pizza pop-up into a successful brick and mortar pizzeria.
Overview
Today, Dantini is a full-service pizza operation. But it started as a pizza pop-up turning out 40 pies a night from my brother-in-law's home oven. I created a compelling brand identity and polished digital presence that helped Dantini grow beyond its humble origins.
My Role
Creative Director
I worked with the owner, Garrett Fitzgerald, to direct Dantini’s brand strategy and develop its identity from scratch. I designed a logo and color palette, a website, pizza boxes, business cards, weekly menus, and more.
For one year, I was the brand's photographer and also ran front-of-house operations.
In addition to creating Dantini's visual identity, I designed a new ordering system that was simple for customers to understand and helped build hype around our pizza.
Problem
"Slide into my DMs" isn't a great way to order pizza.
Dantini started without so much as a name. The business began in March 2020 as a weekly fundraiser for Seattle's Hospitality Fund, selling pizzas from Garrett's Instagram account.
As the business grew, customers had trouble figuring out how to order a pie. Once they were following the Instagram account, they had to be lucky enough to be online when Garrett posted the week's menu to DM their order.
To grow, Dantini needed a memorable identity and an easier way for customers to order a pie.
Opportunity
How might we leverage design thinking to make an unlikely pizza joint the hottest ticket in town?
Solution
Understanding the Users
Defining the Problem
Design Solutions
An identity for Dantini.
Dantini was the name of Garrett's grandfather's restaurant in Elkhart, Indiana. I created a new logo, color palette, and identity to make the Dantini brand Garrett's own. The visual identity references Italian and Midwestern motifs with a color palette inspired by Garrett's new home in the Pacific Northwest.
A countdown clock and a makeshift call center.
With our small oven, we could make two pizzas every fifteen minutes. Sounds simple, right? To our surprise, we couldn't find any product on the market that would allow customers to place orders online without overbooking our oven or pizzas disappearing from carts.
I designed a low-tech solution involving a countdown clock and a Google Form. Every Thursday at 7pm, the countdown clock on our website would strike zero and customers could request their pie via a Google Form. From a kitchen table, my sister and I would manually assign pickup slots and call back customers to confirm their orders, giving a personal touch to the experience.
During Washington's stay-at-home order, hunting down takeout like Dantini was all part of the fun. Our countdown clock added to our hype and made ordering our pie easy to understand.
"To procure pie from Dantini, a weekly popup at Harry’s Fine Foods, I set an alarm on my phone for 7pm on a Thursday, when the ordering window opened. But I got distracted; by 7:35, just one pickup slot remained."
-Allecia Vermillion for Seattle Met
Weekly menu drops.
It's not that we didn't have a website—we did! But most of the pandemic pizza action happened on Instagram. I designed an Instagram-specific menu to meet users where they were.
As Dantini's menu grew to offer build-your-own pies, I designed a new scrolling menu that we updated on a weekly basis.
A pizza box that people love to unbox.
A custom pizza box is just...*chef's kiss*. I designed a custom screenprinted box to help elevate the Dantini brand.
The box was a success—the design has spawned its own genre of Dantini "unboxing" videos and photos that customers love to share on social media.
Rad merch.
After we'd been around for a year, we had a loyal fan base. And fans demand merch! I hand dyed and screenprinted T-shirts featuring Dantini's OG menu and pizza box design.
The menu T-shirts turned out to be handy for working shifts at Dantini. When new customers dropped in and asked "what's on the menu?", all I had to do was turn around.
Results
From zero to $20k.
We grew monthly revenue from zero to $20k in eight months through laser focus on visual design and user delight (and the best pizza in town, of course). Our strategy worked; a polished digital presence and visual identity made Dantini seem like so much more than two folks slinging pies in a shuttered bistro two nights a week.
Making headlines.
Dantini became a darling of Seattle's burgeoning pandemic pop-up scene. Beyond Garrett's fantastic pizza, our incessant focus on beautiful photography and storytelling got us noticed. Dantini was featured in the Seattle Times, Eater, Infatuation, Seattle Met, and others.
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
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The Giraffe Chair is an ambiguous chair for uncertain times. It's more than a place to sit.
Giraffe Chair
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The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture
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