Chicago’s Graphic Alliance Makes a Meal Out of Restaurant Signage

It could be argued that the restaurant is the perfect encapsulation of the entire graphic communications market. Small-format print like menus, flyers, and promotional materials sit alongside wide-format and applied graphics like signage, wall graphics, floor graphics, and table graphics. Graphics can be applied to checkout counters—even salad bar sneezeguards. Depending on the restaurant, it can also include electronic signage, traditional exterior pylon signage, cut letters, neon, LED, even vehicle graphics. Then there is electronic media: the restaurant’s website, social media, non-print-based marketing. Any “full-service” print provider serving the restaurant market has likely discovered that those services are legion—and the time in which they need to be turned around is not quite “30 minutes or less” (as one pizza chain once advertised), although it can seem like it.

“I think when people realize they need signage, they’re ready for it that second,” said Eric Grossman, founder and CEO of marketing agency Graphic Alliance. “The rush is mad for signage, the turnaround is extreme.”

Located in Wheeling, Ill., a suburb northwest of Chicago, Graphic Alliance has built up a steady clientele in the ever-changing, ever-growing restaurant business, and Grossman believes that one of the keys to the company’s success has been its ability to turn jobs around very quickly. 

Founded in 1998—and celebrating its 20th anniversary this year—Graphic Alliance began, like many of today’s wide-format businesses, as a traditional commercial print business. Grossman himself started as a graphic designer, and began adding print capabilities to his design business. As the commercial printing market started to contract after the turn of the millennium, he seized on emerging wide-format printing. “The industry had changed from printing to large-format signage and we embraced it,” he said. He quickly found a niche serving the restaurant industry and it has only grown. There are currently about 150 restaurants that Graphic Alliance works with. “We’ve been doing restaurant graphics for the past 15 years,” said Grossman, “and the restaurant industry is constantly changing.” Currently, one major restaurant trend is toward more organic, locally grown ingredients, as well as catering to various dietary restrictions. Adding “gluten-free” or “vegan” options to a menu means a lot of repeat business to printers who produce menus, signage, and promotional materials. 

But it has been the explosion of substrates that has helped Graphic Alliance’s business take off. One of Grossman’s clients is Roti Modern Mediterranean, a national restaurant chain with several Chicago locations. Graphic Alliance produces window graphics, door graphics, menus, and a wide variety of indoor graphics, including a large wall mural. “One of the problems we faced was the amount of different materials the walls are made of,” said Grossman. One of Grossman’s go-to resources is Mactac, a supplier of adhesive substrates for many applications, including wide-format graphics. “As new substrates are coming out, partnering with companies like Mactac, with the amount of materials that they have to be able to install graphics on brick, tile, and glass, has made it amazingly easy to give our clients anything they are currently looking for. I can get samples, and they help me learn how to do anything the customer wants, whether we’re wrapping wood telephone poles or cement sidewalks.” A number of Graphic Alliance’s customers are chain restaurants, and as they open new locations, there are new challenges involving the specifics of the new space, while at the same time having to match the new graphics to those in the older locations.  

The capabilities of new wide-format printing and substrate technologies have transformed restaurant interiors. “In the past, somebody would need to paint the walls,” said Grossman. “Now it’s easier to put up vinyl graphics and cover the walls with images.” 

Graphic Alliance works with a local designer named Brian Chojnowski. “He uses us for all of his restaurants,” said Grossman. “He’s done graphics for 25 or 30 different restaurants. He hires us as he sees that our turnaround time is extremely fast.” 

A major recent project was for America’s Dog & Burger, a three-generations-old local institution, which has grown to four Chicagoland locations. 

They had just added a new location at Navy Pier, and needed to decorate the interior. Founders Manolis and George Alpogianis wanted the interior walls and windows to depict a storyboard of the restaurant’s history. However, when we say “walls,” that can involve a wide variety of interior surfaces, each of which requires different materials. Again, Grossman partnered with Mactac for these materials, which included: 

• IMAGin B-free Frosted Window Films for the restaurant’s front window and other glass surfaces and salad bar sneeze guards.
• REBEL media with PERMACOLOR ColorGard LUV matte overlaminate for a wall comprising subway tiles.
• MACmark 8300Pro for small, cut letters applied to the doors. 
• ROODLE media with PERMACOLOR ColorGard LUV matte overlaminate to create a simulated brick finish that replicated the walls of the other locations. 

For the printing, Graphic Alliance used its workhorse, a 64-inch Roland SOLJET Pro 4. It was a lot of work, but here’s the rub: “We had one day to turn around the graphics,” said Grossman. You’ve heard of fast food? This is fast food graphics. But, Graphic Alliance made it happen. And it paid off. “They have two more stores coming up, so we’ve got two more on our plate,” said Grossman. “They love our turnaround and our quality and it’s very easy to work with them.” 

Despite the consistency in appearance with other locations, the similarities end there, as each new location has different dimensions and wall and window characteristics, so it’s difficult, if not impossible, to take a templated approach to the interior graphics. “You form to the store you’re in,” said Grossman. “Once we get the dimensions and we get some architectural drawings, we’re able to lay it out in Photoshop and do all our mock-up. If needed, we contact our Mactac rep who tells us what we can use on the different surfaces. If we can’t figure it out, we call in the experts.”

The Roland SOLJET is his go-to printer, but Grossman has recently started partnering with a company that has a flatbed printer and a router. “It can print up to six-inch-thick material and go straight to a router, so we’re able to now use that direct-to-print flatbed for some of the needs that our customers have,” he said. “The flatbed is the future of this industry, because you can print on so many different substrates. Combining vinyl with these direct-to-print flatbeds, it’s an artist’s dreamland.” 

The advent of new substrates has also helped Graphic Alliance add new kinds of applied graphics. “We started to see new materials coming out in the automotive industry and that’s been an opportunity for our customers to start seeing these new products,” said Grossman. “We’ve started producing vehicle and fleet graphics for different restaurants.” That has led Graphic Alliance to offer vehicle wrapping to other businesses, as well as restaurants. “Vehicle wrapping is hot right now, “ he said. “We see the industry changing as we’re able to now offer software where people can buy a car and change up the designs right there before they take ownership of it.” 

He has also started pursuing custom digital décor in residential locations. “That’s a new direction that we’re going in,” Grossman said. “We’re actually finishing up our website for a new concept called Doors where you can do wall wraps for your kids or yourself.” 

In addition to a flatbed printer, a router is also on Grossman’s wish list. “Being able to cut out three-dimensional letters, symbols, and logos and start incorporating them into vehicle wraps and wall graphics is the next thing I’m looking to do, as well as incorporate some LED lights into signage on trucks for night-time advertising.” 

For Grossman, it’s a never-ending learning process, but one that continually pays off in new products to offer customers. 

“Everything is difficult until it isn’t,” he says.