1. More televisions, louder music and provocative pronouncements the chain calls “Boneisms” are meant to make Smokey Bones' bar a destination for party-loving people.

The heavy wooden timbers and four-color photos of babbling mountain brooks and snowcapped peaks, which lent the interior a lodge look, are gone. The caramel-colored wood paneling on the walls remains, but now it's covered with cheeky black-and-white photographs. Red and gray paint trims the once-plain windows; green vines hang from windowsills; and tall vases of birch branches dot the dining room.

Televisions—a hallmark of Smokey Bones' previous look—still crowd the house, but there are fewer in the dining room and more in the bar. The bar is also festooned with wry sayings (Boneisms) suspended from banners, and lighting is brighter and more flattering.

2. Smokey Bones added softer, warmer lighting and plants to the dining room to make it feel different but not totally separate from the bar.

The design changes—indeed, a total brand repositioning—are meant to appeal to a psychographic of “social starters,” a group of fun-loving Type-A personalities who like to try new things and bring their friends along for the ride. They're also meant to give diners a reason other than barbecue to go to Smokey Bones.

“Barbecue is very limiting,” says Ian Baines, president and CEO of Smokey Bones and a mastermind of the chain's 2008 purchase from Orlando-based Darden Restaurants Inc. “People crave it, but not often enough.” Plus, Baines says, he saw opportunity in the bars that are a large, and permanent, footprint at the 68 Smokey Bones.

Smokey Bones assembled a team, including McMillan and Push, an Orlando-based marketing and advertising firm, to get the repositioning started. The mandate: to play down the family aspect of the concept and play up the energy level, thus appealing to the social-starter psychographic, rather than a traditional demographic of income, age and education level.

“We want to pigeonhole people a little too tightly, putting them into an economic or age bracket,” Baines says. The social-starter psychographic “is the bull's eye,” he adds. “They get it. They're the ones making it happen.”

3. Removing the heavy timbers that were a signature of the previous design helped lighten the new Smokey Bones interior.

The biggest design change involved removing the large timbers that were the signature of the old Smokey Bones' interior. The logs gave the restaurants a “big, heavy feeling; not as open and inviting,” says Pete Bell, Smokey Bones vice president of marketing.

The logs and mountain photos also lent a themed look to the restaurant—a look new management wanted to dispel quickly. “There was a definite desire to move away from the log cabin,” says John Ludwig, Push partner and chief executive officer. “They needed a clean separation after the purchase from Darden.”

To de-lodge the look, McMillan replaced harsh light fixtures with glowing orange pendants and highlighted the photo displays with cans and spotlights.

He outfitted the bar with more high-top tables and barstools, going so far as to elevate booths on the periphery as well.

That was key to setting the tone in the bar, Bell says. “People want to get up and move around and visit at different tables,” he explains. “If there are low tables and booths, you feel you're interrupting a guest's meal.”

4. Above. Because high tables make for easier socializing, the designers added bar-height tables and elevated the booths in the bar. 5. Below. Twig-filled planters add visual interest to the space; red and gray trim around previously unadorned windows is meant to evoke fire and smoke.

Redistributing televisions also helped ramp up the energy level. Because women indicated they'd rather not watch their husbands watch TV during dinner, Smokey Bones took televisions out of the dining room but added them to the bar and also turned down the music volume in the dining room. The effect is a dining room that feels separate but not divorced from the bar.

The first redesigned Smokey Bones opened in Orlando in August; a second opened in Plantation, Fla., last fall. Although Baines won't be specific, he says the redesign cost in the six figures and has resulted in positive sales results at each restaurant, helping to reverse a negative sales trend.

Smokey Bones has yet to survey customers, but anecdotal evidence indicates that customers are using the restaurant for more than barbecue. An extensive menu redesign that focuses less on barbecue and more on grilled meats and seafood helps “people view us as more than just a barbecue joint,” Baines says.

On a busy night, a look at the dining room reveals the “social starter” set in action. “We're seeing bigger groups come in, people meeting after work, some of the adult social or sports clubs,” Baines says. As a result, alcohol sales at the Orlando store have increased to as much as 36 percent of sales on weekend nights.

Because social starters are by definition always looking for the next big thing, Smokey Bones added live or DJ music on Friday nights and devised Thursday-night food specials to keep them coming back.

MORE: Smokey Bones promotes each unit separately via its Web site, forcing managers to go digital.