01

Context

A BRAND IDENTITY CRISIS

True Food Kitchen is a premium brand by both choice and consequence. It sources local, organic meat and produce. It builds kitchens large enough to accommodate the isolated needs of allergies and dietary restrictions. It is dedicated to championing local artists and small businesses in the interior design of its restaurants. It stands for quality at any cost and loyal guests happily support that value with their wallets. But with a need for greater guest acquisition, the value equation for guests must deliver that message of quality across all touchpoints.

02

Problem

REASSURING GUESTS

“Value” in the restaurant industry has forked to include a guest journey that is premium in every way. From the start-to-finish experience within a restaurant to the added benefits provided within your digital world. You expect the journey to begin well before you sit down to eat. From the way produce is grown and harvested to the ingredients consciously included (or omitted) from dishes. Organic, locally-sourced, and plant-based are all values for you, but with so much deception from brands, you are desperate for a restaurant to live those values and bring you into the story. To reassure and inspire you with every meal you eat.

03

Solution

BRINGING THE BRAND STORY TO LIFE

True Food Kitchen wants people to eat optimistically. To taste a world where healthy food is delicious and where a kale salad can improve the livelihood of a farmer down the road. Serving up this optimism with brand visuals meant modernizing everything. Fonts, colors, packaging, photography, uniforms, web/mobile ordering user experience.

04

Strategy

TO MAXIMIZE EFFICIENCY AND IMPACT

Bringing digital platforms in-house enabled control over consistency. As the leader of Design and Strategy, systems were developed for both internal and external teams to efficiently create brand collateral that follow both a cohesive brand story and the new visual language. These systems opened up collaborations between teams that had never existed in the company’s history and a digital strategy that drove record engagement across social, web, and email platforms.

05

2020 Pivots

COVID-19 PANDEMIC

2020 was a year for perfecting the art of “building the plane while flying it.” Success came from delicately balancing the execution of daily chaos and future-focused innovation. The strategy developed before the pandemic allowed for streamlined work that could be changed as policies and guidelines shifted. The renewed brand story acted as a backbone to guide the development of an entirely new dining experience model for the future. Cost savings and simplified back-end solutions were planned by connecting dots across industries. Emerging technologies were leveraged to deliver a meaningful guest experience. An arsenal of new ways to tell the True Food Kitchen story was created.

Being served up soon.