A fast-growing New York-based company is applying techniques more common to the chain-restaurant industry — franchising, company-wide cleanliness and customer-service standards, and sophisticated marketing — to the previously mundane business of manicures.

When the first Dashing Diva store opened in 2003, there were already more than 3,000 nail salons peppering the five boroughs — most offering a similar menu of manicures under $10, bubbly footbath pedicures, body waxing, and 10-minute chair massages.

Amid a saturated manicure market, Dashing Diva took a different tack: branding its inaugural Greenwich Village parlor with its iridescent tile “pink pedicure lounge,” its medical-grade sanitation practices, its “Virtual Nails” acrylic alternatives, and its twice weekly “Girls Night Out” evenings, featuring dance music and free cosmopolitans.

Customers flocked to the hot-pink-accented salon, which soon became a hot spot for birthdays and bachelorette parties. New locations opened on Manhattan’s Upper East and Upper West sides, and in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn — as well as in California, North Carolina, and in several cities internationally. Dashing Diva says it plans to open 10 more American stores by the end of the year, with Murray Hill, Carnegie Hill, Turtle Bay, and Montclair, N.J., mentioned as possible new locations.

The chief operating officer of Dashing Diva, Deborah Storz, said customers have proved surprisingly willing to go out of their way — and pay more — for a Dashing Diva experience. “We’ve changed the whole notion of the neighborhood nail salon,” she said. “It’s become a destination.”

Dashing Diva salons are equipped with ceramic pedicure sinks — not whirlpool footbaths, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said are more difficult to disinfect. While nail salons are required by New York State to sanitize metal tools between customers, the flagship and franchises go a step further by sterilizing clippers, cutters, and shapers in “autoclaving” machines used in dental offices. New customers purchase individual emery boards and buffers, which can be taken home or stored for future use at the salon.

The chain’s focus on hygiene is what prompted Brooklyn resident Robin Moreno to become a Dashing Diva regular. “At the place I used to go, I could get a manicure and pedicure for $17, but it was dirty — there were nail clippings on the floor, ” Ms. Moreno, a magazine editor, said as she waited for a manicure to dry at the Greenwich Village salon. “Here, it’s clean and cute, and I know exactly what I’m going to get.”

A basic manicure and pedicure costs $50 at Dashing Diva.

Nail technicians, who receive commissions for selling salon-goers on higher-priced services, are required to speak English on the selling floor — except in the case of a customer’s request to speak a common native tongue.

The 8th Street flagship salon is owned and operated by the Port Washington, L.I.-based Dashing Diva Franchise Corp., whose chief executive is John Chang, an artificial-nail entrepreneur from South Korea. All other Dashing Diva salons are run by locals who pay the corporation an initial franchise fee of $25,000 and 4% of the salon’s revenues on an ongoing basis.

Franchises must conform to the corporation’s aesthetic standards: pedicure stations adorned with shiny, cotton-candy-color tiles, hot -pink awnings and accents, and white retail showcases stocked with Dashing Diva’s proprietary brand of press-on nails, skin creams, and nail lacquers.

Since entrepreneur Joanne Chung spent more than $200,000 converting her Upper East Side salon, which had been named Elegant Nails, to a Dashing Diva franchise about two years ago, revenues have increased fourfold, she said. A native of Seoul, South Korea, Ms. Chung said she was having trouble differentiating Elegant Nails from the other neighborhood salons offering $20 manicure-pedicure specials. “I really wasn’t making enough money,” she said. “I knew I’d have to do something different, or leave the business.”

Ms. Chung said that since re-branding the salon, her customer base has grown — even though she charges more than double that of nearby salons. “We don’t just charge more — we do more so we can charge more,” she said. “They see the cleanliness; they see the products we use; they like the atmosphere.”

Transforming an empty storefront, or even another nail salon, into a Dashing Diva doesn’t come cheap. In New York, start-up costs can approach $300,000, although company employees interested in launching their own franchise are eligible for corporate start-up grants. In 2005, Gina Sun, a nail technician who worked in the flagship store, took advantage of this opportunity — opening her own Dashing Diva nail salon in Brooklyn. Mrs. Sun, a native of Seoul, South Korea, now draws clients from throughout the borough to her “pink and white, and fun” Smith Street salon.