A Standard Built to Flex
Inside Fogo de Chão and OIC’s decade-long approach to restaurant openings.
Building A Repeatable Standard For Growth
For Fogo de Chão, growth has never meant replicating the same restaurant from market to market. The internationally renowned Brazilian dining brand has continued to evolve how its churrasco experience takes shape across different locations, formats and guest environments while preserving the standards that make the brand distinctly Fogo.
Every new location introduces a different combination of architecture, construction conditions, operational requirements and local realities.
For more than a decade, OIC has evolved alongside that process, from resolving infrastructure issues near opening day to working with Fogo's IT, construction and architectural teams from design through turnover. The relationship created a repeatable way to translate the brand's expectations into environments that could look, feel and operate differently from one another.
From solving the opening to supporting the pipeline
OIC's relationship with Fogo did not begin with a national rollout. It began near opening day in San Francisco in 2016, where cabling supporting POS and wireless connectivity was failing. OIC stepped in to diagnose the infrastructure and stabilize the systems the restaurant depended on. When another opening in New Orleans exposed a different infrastructure gap, OIC came back. The issues changed from project to project, but the pattern was becoming clear: gaps between technology, construction and operations could create risk at the moment a restaurant needed to be ready. As OIC demonstrated an understanding of those operational consequences, its role moved further upstream from resolving late-stage issues to supporting deployment and eventually participating in the design process itself.
San Francisco
Late-stage infrastructure support
Scope Expands
Infrastructure → systems → design involvement
New Orleans
Repeat engagement
Long-term program
Design through turnover
The standard behind Fogo’s growth
Years of openings created something more valuable than familiarity. They produced a repeatable framework for coordinating design, construction, operations and technology across a growing portfolio of restaurants.
That is the foundation of what OIC calls a Brand Technology Standard: a corporate framework for how technology should support the brand across locations while leaving room for each restaurant’s architecture, operating model and site conditions to shape the final solution.
For Fogo, consistency lives in the experience and operating expectations of the brand, not in making every restaurant physically identical.
THE OUTCOME
Growth became more predictable.
With a documented technology standard, each new opening could start from a proven foundation instead of beginning from scratch.
Built for the realities of each opening.
The Venetian and Seattle Rooftop put OIC’s approach to work in very different conditions. Las Vegas tested it through scale, evolving design and field complexity, while Seattle required a solution shaped around a new rooftop format, climate and guest experience.
PROJECT STORY. LAS VEGAS
The Venetian
Scaling the standard under pressure
PROJECT STORY . SEATTLE
next Level Rooftop
When the format changes, the standard must flex with it.
Fogo’s approximately 14,000-square-foot restaurant brought two levels of dining, bar areas and private spaces into one of the brand’s most visible U.S. openings. The scale was different, but the greater test came as the restaurant continued evolving during construction.
When an open ceiling condition changed to a finished ceiling, OIC adapted the audio approach with the architecture. In the field, HVAC, sprinklers and other building systems began occupying locations originally planned for speakers and cameras, requiring the team to adjust placement while preserving coverage, performance and the visual intent of the space.
Operational requirements shaped decisions as well. An additional POS beneath the staircase required coordination with the architectural team because Fogo wanted the station positioned around how servers would actually move through the dining room.
Later, when water intrusion affected an installation area, OIC resequenced its work rather than install sensitive equipment into an unresolved condition or allow one issue to stall progress elsewhere.
The project illustrates what the Fogo standard had become: not a fixed technology package, but an established way of making decisions when the restaurant, the drawings and the job site inevitably evolve.
Seattle presented a different question: how could the same operating standard support a space in which architecture, climate and guest experience called for a completely different physical solution?
With no conventional indoor room available for the technology rack, OIC adapted the infrastructure to the rooftop itself, using an outdoor-rated enclosure capable of protecting the equipment through Seattle’s changing conditions. Cabling was routed beneath the patio so the infrastructure would remain visually secondary to the architecture.
Audio required the same flexibility. Rather than forcing the preferred specification into an environment where another solution better served the acoustic, weather and aesthetic requirements, OIC adjusted the approach to the space.
Seattle demonstrated the other side of the Fogo standard: consistency could protect the brand without limiting what the next expression of that brand could become.
That gave Fogo room to explore a new guest experience without turning the technology behind it into an entirely new operating model.
What ten years compounds
The value compounds from one project to the next. OIC does not begin every opening by relearning how Fogo operates. Design decisions, field experience and operational requirements from one restaurant become context for the next.
protect the brand intent, make the space work and get the restaurant ready to operate.
For restaurant groups planning the next stage of growth, the Fogo program offers a useful lesson: the standard behind the brand should make expansion more repeatable without limiting what the next restaurant can become.
OIC works alongside restaurant brands, architects, contractors and operations teams to define and deliver the technology standards behind each opening. Twenty-nine years of experience have shaped a model that connects design decisions with construction realities and operational needs, from early planning and field coordination through final turnover. The objective remains consistent from project to project, even when the physical solution changes.