The Cheesecake Shop is rolling out a multi-million dollar rejuvenation strategy to accelerate growth

After 32 years the The Cheesecake Shop is serving up a new look, new desserts and an open kitchen where you can watch your cake being made.

Australia’s largest cake franchise business is serving up a fresh new look and will broaden its appeal from a celebratory event shop to a dessert business for all occasions as part of plans to accelerate growth.

The Cheesecake Shop will launch a new logo, a major TV commercial, new store fit-outs and a tagline as part of a multimillion dollar rejuvenation strategy for the business which opened its first shop in the inner-west Sydney suburb of Rozelle in 1991.

The Cheesecake Shop chief executive Scott Bush said “we’re doing the whole lot” and part of the strategy will be connecting customers more to the bakery side of the business.

“The brand’s quite iconic. It’s been around for 32 years and in the case of most brands you go through the stage of freshening things up,” he said.

“We’ve been known as Australia’s favourite celebratory cake shop but we want the public to think about us more broadly as a dessert business.

The old Cheescake Shop look.

Scott Bush at a new-lookshop.

“We want people to think about us in that dessert space on every and any occasion like Monday night on the couch, as opposed to a celebratory cake shop.”

The company has 239 stores in Australia and New Zealand and its franchisees employ more than 2000 people.

In 2022-23 The Cheesecake Shop generated 6.8 per cent of same store sales growth and opened 12 new stores. It’s on track to open 15 by the end of the calendar year.

Mr Bush – who joined The Cheesecake Shop after a 20-year career with Dominos Pizza – said they were working on a pipeline of between 15 and 20 new stores a year.

“It’s a very achievable number. We have a tremendous amount of franchisee inquiries which is exciting and we’re also developing a multi-unit platform for our existing franchisees, which will give them more of an opportunity to own multiple stores,” he said.

During the rebranding process, the company invested deeply in consumer research, exploring the perception of current and past customers and how they felt about the brand.

They worked with franchisees on the brands push to reach new audiences and grow.

Mr Bush said there will be elements in the company’s three decade history they will keep.

Part of this will be a nostalgic new store look, led by McCartney Design, which will connect customers with the kitchen where the cakes and desserts are made.

Pavlova from The Cheesecake Shop.

They will be able to watch as they are baked and decorated in the new open layout and they will be presented modern curved display cabinets while retro elements such as menu boards, striped awnings and tiled counters and a click-and-collect counter will also feature in the new fit-outs.

The company’s training grounds and corporate store in Guildford in Sydney’s west will adopt the new look from November 6, followed by Port Macquarie on the NSW Central Coast as the new brand rolls out across Australia and New Zealand.

All new stores to open will adopt the modern store fit-out, while existing stores will be gradually updated as part of refurbishment plans.