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Half of Bob Evans restaurants in the Miami Valley to close briefly for makeover
About half of the 30 Bob Evans Restaurants in the Dayton area and greater Miami Valley will close briefly sometime in the coming months for an “extensive makeover,” the restaurant chain announced this morning, Feb. 8. The remainder have already undergone the renovations, Bob Evans officials said.
Two of those restaurants — the Englewood-area location at 7715 Hoke Road in Clayton, and the Bellbrook-Centerville area restaurant at 5525 Wilmington Ave. — closed Sunday for renovations and are scheduled to reopen on Valentine’s Day Monday, according to Margaret Standing, director of corporate communications for Bob Evans Farms, the Columbus-based parent company of the restaurant chain.
The idea behind what Bob Evans Restaurants calls the “Farm-Fresh Refresh Project” is to update and modernize all of its restaurants in the region. The Dayton area was chosen as the start of this potential company-wide renovation project based upon demographics as well as the current state of its existing Bob Evans restaurants, Standing said. The area has a large percentage of young families and is a “good snapshot” of the restaurant chain’s target market, the Bob Evans spokeswoman said.
Standing said the renovations have already occurred at 14 of the Dayton region’s 30 Bob Evans restaurants, with 16 more to go. She declined to release dollar figures on how much the renovations will cost, citing competitive reasons, but said it “would be safe to assume it will be in the millions” of dollars because of the scope of the project. Renovations take a week to 10 days on average, with some locations requiring one to three days. Employees attend paid training sessions during the time the restaurants are closed to prepare them for some of the new store features included in the renovations.
The makeover includes a new Taste of the Farm Bakery, a dedicated carry-out area, gift card displays, a redesigned retail area featuring gifts and a mural depicting a background on the heritage of Bob Evans. Dining rooms are being updated to include more modern furnishings and light fixtures, Bob Evans officials said.
Randy Hicks, president and chief concept officer of Bob Evans Restaurants, said in a news release that the renovations create “a completely new look and feel to enhance the guest experience” in a “more contemporary environment.”
“As Bob Evans locations emerged over the years, a variety of structures and designs were built,” Hicks said. “The Dayton market is made up of several of these designs and layouts, giving us both an opportunity and a challenge to refresh them and give them a cohesive look and feel.”
While 29 of the 30 restaurants in the restaurant chain’s Dayton region will be or have been renovated in their existing structures, one Darke County restaurant — on Wagner Avenue in Greenville — has been “completely reconstructed from the ground up,” Bob Evans officials said.
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