Heston Blumenthal is a good chef, culinary experimenter, entertainer and businessman; he is also a good storyteller. His meals and television programmes are as much about telling a story and giving an experience as it is about fine food.
Over the past few years, Heston’s restaurant The Fat Duck has gathered numerous awards and booking a table has become more difficult. His approach to cooking combined with high demand and only 48 covers has meant that guests need to book at least 3 months in advance. That’s some wait. While guests might be happy to wait, it is a gap in the experience.
Heston wanted to improve the reservation system. He wanted the experience to start with the reservation, building pre-dinner anticipation and then compliment the dining itself.
Heston approached The Neighbourhood who approach expereince and communication design from the perspective of telling stories. The answer was a multi-sensory reservation experience:
“After a reservation has been successfully made, a weblink is emailed to the diners with an invitation to experience an exclusive piece of content to instigate the Fat Duck journey. An experience designed to whet their appetites.
Our animated journey takes the diners through a series of evocative landscapes and visual cues that they will discover during their visit, encountering a series of reward mechanisms through imagined worlds, to arrive at the door of a sweetshop.
Once inside, the visual stimulus is removed leaving a curious world of sound guided by John Hurt’s narration as the shopkeeper. The narration and rich binaural audio soundscape allows guests to recall their own childhood sweetshop, imagining the sights, sounds and smells through a combination of stimuli and memory.”
The whole experience is brought to a close with the final course - a bag of sweets and the aroma of a sweet shop. As a nice parting gift, guests receive an augmented digital souvenir.
I love this. I think it is a great example of thinking carefully about the guest’s journey and experience. It demonstrates the power of storytelling using complimentary yet unexpected elements. The experience really reflects the magical and theatrical approach of Heston’s cooking. It has made the mundane process of making a reservation an integral part of a guests experience.
You can find out more here:
And here for the augmented digital souvenir.