A Tasty New Brand Identity and Retail Fit-out Design for a New Chain of Crépe Stores.
Crépe Shoppe was a new concept utilizing small retail spaces, to cook and serve-up French style, hot crepe’s in food courts launching at Southgate and then opening soon after Knox Shopping Centre. We were engaged by the client’s architect who recommended us to work in partnership on the realization of the concept.
Challenge
The challenge for this project was to capture the spirit of a French style creperie and translate that into the busy environment of shopping center food courts in a manner that was both fresh, appealing and stood out in the crazy-busy food court retail environment.
Insight
Nothing says ‘French crépes’ more than the iconic French chef – a visual property that would differentiate the offer immediately within the competitor mix of the food courts where the brand would compete.
Design Solution
“From early in our analysis of the visual code for the category it was obvious the clear space in terms of visual language the brand could own in the market was always going to be centered around France. Starting with the image of a French chef at its heart, we sought to create a palette of graphic brand imagery that would be instantly recognizable, but also flexible enough to stretch across the many demands retail places on a brand,” says David Ansett, Chief Creator of Brands, Truly Deeply. “When designing for food brands (and especially food retail brands) we look to leverage the powerfully evocative associations of flavour, temptation, craving and experience. When combined with the persona of our French chef character, the layers of evocative association we created for The Crépe Shoppe delivered a retail brand with strong consumer appeal”.
The brand design assets also included a collage of French imagery sourced from the photo albums of our own staff. The collage format provided real flexibility when it came time to apply the visual language to a modular retail space branding solution.
Deliverables
Truly Deeply provided a complete brand identity design package for The Crépe Shoppe including the brand identity design, graphic palette for retail space, web site and packaging
Results
Working closely with the client and architect we developed the brand identity and over-saw the implementation of signage and packaging for the first, launch store at Southgate, Melbourne. The first store delivered proof of concept with a successful launch, exceeding budget from week one and dominating the between and after meal sweet snack market in the Southgate food precinct. The success of The Crépe Shoppe launch store saw the opening of a second branded store soon after at Knox.