Dressing for Dinner : Restaurants: Make-overs are on the menu at several chains. ‘Nobody wants to go to a place that looks old and tired,’ says one consultant.

When Carl’s Jr. began planning a “Prototype 2000” restaurant, its design team incorporated an expensive lighting system to illuminate the dining room and a decorative front countertop for the cash registers.

But later this year when the Anaheim-based fast-food operator rolls out its new eateries in Southern California, customers won’t be dining by the light of the sophisticated system. And their money will pass over a less-elegant but decidedly more practical countertop.

“You go through an awful lot of ideas in a prototype store,” said William Espinosa, vice president of strategic planning for CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Carl’s Jr. “But a lot of them get eliminated quickly because they’re not practical or they don’t meet the budget.”

What diners will see is a new, cleaner-looking exterior, a state-of-the-art salad bar and an interior design that opens the kitchen up so diners can watch their food being prepared. Even Happy, the chain’s longstanding “star” logo, will be sporting a sportier look.

Carl’s Jr. is one of several eateries changing its looks. New color schemes and designs are also on the menu at Del Taco, Mimi’s Cafe, Denny’s and Chart House.

Some restaurant experts say that consumers, perhaps driven by the fast pace of television, expect chains to change their looks more frequently than before. “The old [redecorating] cycle was every eight years or so,” said Paul Hitzelberger, vice president of Del Taco Inc. “Now, it seems to be down to about a five-year cycle.”

Whatever the reason, restaurateurs agree that it doesn’t pay to delay renovations.

“The reality is that nobody wants to go to a place that looks old and tired,” said Hal Sieling, a Carlsbad-based restaurant industry consultant. “Denny’s is a classic example of a place that got run down, and its profitability got hurt as a result of that.”

Restaurant chains agree that a dated look--which often is equated to a lack of cleanliness--can send patrons running for the door as fast as a bad menu.

“Cleanliness goes beyond a strict definition of what’s clean,” said Robert Sandelman, a Brea-based restaurant industry consultant who regularly polls consumers. “It includes a feel or perception. So if you’ve got a dated concept with ‘70s colors, there’s an impression that the restaurant in general is dated and maybe not as clean as it should be.”

Psychologists have long been aware of the power of colors, said Sue Ross, a color expert with Monterey Carpets in Santa Ana. That’s why hospitals are introducing warmer colors that ease patients’ fears, schools are incorporating colors that can calm excited students and jail wardens favor colors that can help to soothe cooped-up inmates.

*

Colors also can make or break a restaurant, Ross said. “I’ve seen restaurants literally fail because the design work was indescribably poor. People felt so badly while they were eating that they never came back.”

Denny’s, the nation’s largest full-service restaurant chain, is spending $28 million to remodel its admittedly tired restaurants in Southern California and introduce its new logo. Its new restaurants feature brighter lighting, gabled entrances, better landscaping and interiors that are supposed to make the chain’s eateries more attractive to families.

But rather than risk alienating longtime customers, Denny’s will maintain some important links to the past. Its new signs will incorporate the chain’s traditional yellow “French Diamond shield,” but the lettering has been modernized and set on a dark-green border.

Carl’s Jr., which will spend a minimum of $50,000 per store to refurbish 35 restaurants each quarter through 1998, faces the tough task of incorporating the new Green Burrito menu at many of its 650 establishments. The Anaheim-based chain has created three prototype stores to help determine the best way to blend its burgers and Green Burrito’s Mexican-style fast food under one roof so that their joint marketing agreement won’t confuse or alienate customers.

Del Taco is rolling out its “Prototype 2000” store, which also incorporates neon lighting, courtyards and a two-story exterior that’s designed to make the chain’s eateries stand out in urban locations.

“In 1991 we went through the chain and redid it with reds, beige, yellows and greens,” Hitzelberger said. “But now it’s time to take it to the next stage. There’s only so much you can do with new colors.”

Colors are an especially important part of restaurant design.

Mimi’s Cafe, the Tustin-based family eatery with 21 locations, is changing its pink-and-pastel color scheme to widen its appeal. The chain’s decidedly feminine color scheme dates back to 1979, when the first unit opened in Anaheim, according to Mimi’s President Tom Simms: “Market research determined that women were deciding where families were going to eat, so we said, ‘Let’s design something that’s going to be attractive to them.’ ”

The formula has worked well at the company’s 21 restaurants, Simms said, but the pinks and pastels make some men uneasy, particularly in blue-collar neighborhoods.

Simms’ solution: Renovate the restaurants, using wooden beams, bricks, stones and black-and-white checked tablecloths. But, like Denny’s, Mimi’s is keeping some familiar touches. The dining rooms feature an earthier look but wall decorations and the menu still play heavily upon the chain’s traditional links to New Orleans and Paris.

*

Climate and location also play a role. Chart House Enterprises, the Solana Beach-based chain that operates 65 restaurants across the country, is refurbishing with earth tones, but the palettes vary according to location.

A new restaurant in Newport, Ky., features fall colors, including lots of oranges and browns. But a remodeled restaurant in Malibu will feature deep purples, rusts and golden colors. “We go with the colors of the region,” said Ann Casadont, Chart House’s director of interior design.

Restaurateurs also realize that beauty must be balanced by practicality, particularly at high-volume, fast-food restaurants.

“Everything you choose has to be highly durable, you’ve got to consider energy standards and you’ve got to take into account that it’s going to be cleaned by some maintenance guys in the middle of the night, when they’re banging pails and mops around in the dark,” said Natalie Pitkin-Maizels, president of MAD Collaborative, a Portland-based interior design firm.

Restaurant operators say the best way to launch a successful modeling effort is to build a prototype, or a series of test stores, to find out what works. The initial Carl’s Jr. prototype in Lodi, Espinosa said, served that purpose.

“The lighting was absolutely fantastic, the kind of stuff most of us can’t afford to install in our homes, but operationally it just didn’t work,” Espinosa said. “And the countertop, while made from an attractive material, got really beat up in the first couple of days.”

Other operators agreed that prototypes usually produce glitches.

“We painted that wall out front two or three times,” said Simms, while sipping coffee in Mimi’s Lake Forest restaurant, which served as a prototype. “Each time we’d stand back and say, ‘Nope.’ That’s the nice thing about paint and wallpaper, it’s inexpensive to do it again.”

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule that eateries should be remodeled on a regular schedule.

“If you’ve got a neighborhood place that’s steeped in tradition, you don’t want to dramatically change it,” industry consultant Sandelman said. “You don’t take an Irish pub with dark wood and go to earth-tones and skylights.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Color Schemes

Redecoration means new colors. Here are some of the shades local restaurants will be trying out with their new looks:

* Alligator alley: New color addresses need for an earthbound green; black-based, it reflects the core of society as an urban combat color

* Miami spice: Clay/coral in appearance; a warm, sophisticated mid-tone revealing Mediterranean influence for international appeal

* Outback: A golden brown blending the best of nature; adapted from the arts-and-crafts movement; delivers depth and dimension

* El Sol: A vegetable dye color, optimistic, warm and organic; base is ethnic in inspiration and a bridge between controversial golds and oranges

* Vizcaya palm: Harmonious with both warm and cool colors; is clean and classic, as in the green of glacier rocks

* Shiitake: A heavily saturated neutral possessing a red-based weathered quality; provides compatibility and versatility

* Tropical storm: A grayed blue; delivers a timeless architectural foundation and compatibility

Source: Color Marketing Group, Alexandria, Va.