By day, the Jerry's Subs and Pizza restaurant in Ashton, VA., looks like a fast-casual restaurant, albeit a high-style one. There's a colorful menu board, vast expanses of stainless steel, a red-and-white tiled floor, and a variety of table- and bar-height seats. A strip of purple neon races around the ceiling, but it's barely noticeable in the strong sunlight. At night, the purple neon comes out to play. It glows against the stainless steel and smoky mirrors, creating an exciting interior that beckons to outsiders. "It looks like a Martini bar," says Dave Terzian, executive vice president, and operating partner at Gaithersburg, Md.- based Jerry's. "It ought to make you feel thumpy," agrees designer Travis Price, referring to the vibrations of a stereo's subwoofer. Jerry's executives intended to create neither martini bar nor thumpy feeling when they remodeled the 50-year-old concept, but they did want to create an interior that was exciting and compelling to it's main demographic, 18-44-year-old males. "We wanted the stores to convey a serious but hip images," says Terzian. Natural Touches Preparations for the redesign began two years ago, "Because it was time," confesses Terzian. "It's our first total new look in 15 years." In it's most recent incarnation, Jerry's interior, a melange of beiges, reds and greens, looked more like a staid company cafeteria than an exciting fast-casual restaurant concept. "It wasn't bad, but it was bland," says Terzian. Executives and designer Price first reduced the building size to about 1,800 square feet from a high of 3,600 square feet, then reworked the kitchen to make the back of the house smaller and the front of the house bigger. As a result, the restaurants have as many seats as the old version, says Terzian. In the dining room, they replaced the old laminate and vinyl with more natural finishes such as maple, cork, glass, ceramics and metal. They chose a color scheme of red, white and purple to reflect the colors of Jerry's logo. Terzian terms the new look "soft modern industrial," but in some ways it harks back to the early days of fast food. The floor is red and white tile. The panel behind the menu is banded stainless steel. Following the fast-casual formula, seats are both bar- and table-height to create visual interest. Color-tinted black-and-white photographs of Washington scenes, snapped by local photographer Ken Wyner, insure customers that Jerry's is indeed a local business. The first remodeled unit opened in Aspen Hill, MD., in August 2002. Since then, the prototype has undergone a few cosmetic changes. In the original design, the purple neon and the glass panels near the entry way were encased by perforated stainless-steel valances. "It was a nice look, like an exquisite light fixture," Price says. That nice look, however, cost a few thousand dollars per store, so the valances were banished.
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