Diving into new worlds while dining
Two young female entrepreneurs are shaking up Paris’s dining scene with their immersive theme restaurants, where vision and digitalization go hand in hand. On the EFSS main stage they explained how that works.
Visitors to the restaurants of the Ephemera Group in Paris don’t just experience a modern, innovative restaurant concept—they enter entirely different worlds. The group’s immersive eateries transport guests for an evening into an underwater realm (“Under the Sea”), outer space (“Stellar”), or a jungle (“Jungle Palace”), complete with matching visuals, scents, and of course, flavors. At this year’s European Foodservice Summit in Amsterdam, CEO Jade Frommer (25) and her Chief of Staff Lina Utzig (26) provided insights into these extraordinary themed restaurants.
Engaging all the senses
In these restaurants, the overarching theme influences everything up to the menu. To fully immerse guests into these worlds, Ephemera utilizes a variety of technologies. “We transport people into magical worlds. To achieve this, we use 360-degree projectors and thematic furnishings. We also combine good, affordable food and drinks with our concepts,” explains Frommer.
In practice, their first immersive restaurant “Under the Sea,” developed around four years ago by Frommer and Utzig, features coral-shaped decorations hanging from the ceiling and a floor designed to resemble a rugged sea surface. Various 360-degree video projectors and special lighting design bring the underwater world to life for guests, with a seafood-heavy menu complementing the experience. Additionally, the Ephemera Group employs scent projectors and sound designers to allow guests to immerse themselves with all their senses into the themed environments.
The challenge of reaching people
“The real question we faced was: How do we make these concepts known to the public?” says Frommer. To address this, they focused on three pillars. “Firstly, we are very active on Instagram and TikTok,” Frommer notes. In line with the restaurants, they collaborate with AI artists to blend real film and photo footage with artificial effects for Instagram posts. On TikTok, they emphasize testimonial videos; one featuring an older gentleman went viral, garnering an impressive 4.5 million views. This video alone resulted in 2,500 reservations and additional revenue of €75,000, reveals Frommer.
Beyond social media, Ephemera invests in a uniquely designed website profile. The core feature is not a menu but virtual tours of the restaurants. This approach generates around 5,000 website sessions daily, a remarkably high number for a restaurant website. As the third pillar, Frommer mentions classic satisfaction management, both online and in the restaurants themselves, to secure as many positive reviews as possible.
Economic outlook
The concept developed by the two young entrepreneurs appears to be succeeding. Frommer and Utzig report that each of their three existing restaurants achieves annual sales between €4 million and €5 million, with average bills slightly over €30.
Thanks to this success, further projects are on the horizon. By the end of 2025, six new immersive restaurants are slated to open, not only in France. Among the planned themes are an enchanted forest and a polar expedition.
