Eat Offbeat's colourful id celebrates kitchens from all around the world
Eat Offbeat's seeds were planted in 2013 when Manal Kahi arrived in New York and was impressed with the quality and variety of the peanut butter on offer, but less so with the hummus.
She and her brother Wissam were on a mission to find a hummus as good as their grandmother's, which made them think of the many immigrants who settled in town and the endless other recipes that they could possibly discover and share. The brother and sister duo have teamed up with Michelin-starred chef Juan, who has trained over 40 former refugee chefs with kitchen skills since the official launch of Eat Offbeat in 2015.
The Social Impact Delivery Service seeks to introduce people to kitchens that are "off the beaten track" through private catering and food boxes prepared by ex-refugees from Afghanistan and Venezuela. Working with the International Rescue Committee and the New York Immigration Coalition to find and recruit talented home cooks, each chef is trained to create their own original recipes and dishes.
Pentagram partner Natasha Jen and her team worked with the founders to create a new visual identity, branding strategy and positioning for Eat Offbeat that reflected both the social mission and the bold flavors of the many kitchens.
The team sought to expand its customer base from large-scale catering to everyday consumers as it further branched out into meal sets without losing the humanitarian aspect of its business model.
The new branding strategy highlights Eat Offbeat as a unique and adventurous choice that adds new flavors to the palate and positions the company's offering as “global home cooking”.
Meanwhile, visual identity aims to capture the idea of migration with a guy who shifts and moves before settling in staggered formations that are visually “out of step”. The word mark is set in TT Trailers Bold, which was designed by Type, and a secondary font is set in the minimal Sans-TT-Commons (also created by Type Type).
A lively color palette draws on the variety of cultures and dishes on offer. The color system simplifies the flags into three color bands to indicate the country of origin for individual meals.
The packaging for the food boxes is functional and functional, but it can be provided with a number of illustrated stickers that give the containers the look of packages that have traveled the world collecting stamps and labels.
Pentagram also designed materials for catering such as menus and pop-up tent cards that identify the food being served. All dishes have a description and a photo of the chef who prepared them. This is in line with the company's mission to ensure they are part of the customer experience.
This idea extends across the Eat Offbeat website and social media, which is centered around the chefs and their dishes, to introduce customers to this culinary collective and the delicious meals they create.
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