Johnny Rockets is projected to open a new location of its spin-off burger restaurant, Johnny’s Burger Factory, early next year in Destiny USA.

Construction on the restaurant, which is expected to open in January or early February 2016, will start next week. The location of the restaurant inside Destiny USA is not yet determined.

The new restaurant will have an industrial look and interactive features such as a video wall and digital message board, which represent a complete departure from Johnny Rockets’ original retro design and aesthetic, according to a press release about the opening.

This concept was created in part to appeal to millennials, said Bonnie Warschauer, a communications and public relations strategist currently working with Johnny Rockets, in the release.

“Every detail about the development of Johnny’s Burger Factory, from the first design to construction, product development and marketing had a new kind of consumer in mind,” Johnny Rockets CEO Charles Bruce said in the release. “It’s not possible to ignore millennials and still be competitive in the better burger category.”

From a marketing perspective, it is important for the new restaurant to stand out among the other restaurants in Destiny USA in attracting a younger, millennial audience, said Clint Tankersley, an associate professor of marketing in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University.

“They have to determine where the competition is,” Tankersley said. “The question is, how are they going to be different from the other choices out there?”

Tankersley said Johnny’s Burger Factory needs to work to position itself in the market and offer a unique good for consumers. In terms of attracting its target customer base, he said it is likely that Johnny Rockets will use social media to connect and try to build a relationship with millennials, who Tankersley said “live on their phones.”

The first Johnny’s Burger Factory opened earlier this fall in Walden Galleria in Buffalo. The restaurant at Destiny USA will be its second location, said Rob Schoeneck, the manager of Destiny USA. He added that the Johnny Rockets currently in the mall has been “extremely successful” in the 15 years it has been there.

Schoeneck said even with the increased number of restaurants in Destiny USA, Johnny Rockets has continued to perform strongly, and mall officials will see if the new idea performs just as well.

Tankersley said he is curious to see how the new restaurant will do going into the winter months, which usually result in lower rates of mall patrons.

“It will be interesting to see how Johnny’s Burger Factor will build up a market when they don’t have all the people coming down from Canada, from other places,” he said. “They are going to have to build off of the Syracuse citizen and student market.”

Published on November 10, 2015 at 10:35 pm

Contact Hanna: hrhorvat@syr.edu