Roots Sustainable Food & Community

This restaurant idea focuses on providing customers and the Greater Pittsburgh community with sustainable food and education. The brand deliverables include logos, print, and packaging materials.

The Restaurant

Problem: COVID-19 has created a restricted dining experience. With the increase in delivery, waste and plastic are especially problems in today’s food industry.

The Idea: This sustainable restaurant idea focuses on providing customers and the community with sustainable food and education. Ingredients would be sourced from local farms and sustainable resources to provide fresh meals while supporting our community’s small businesses. Each meal would support local community gardens, with a portion of the meals’ cost supporting the maintenance of a garden or sponsoring a garden bed for a family living with food insecurity. The restaurant concept would hope to positively impact the community by providing education on food and helping those living with food insecurity access nutritious food.

Process

The project was a part of a group of 3 students with myself as the project manager. Our process began with research and ideation of what we each imagined as a unique restaurant experience. Through that research, we discovered how community gardens provide invaluable space for food-insecure individuals as well as help to foster a sense of community. This process led to our overall restaurant “solution”.

We created a few keywords for our restaurant. This helped us to ideate a name and work through our own brand identities:

Community, Sustainable, and Supportive

Mood Boards

The first part of my design process included making mood boards not only for how I wanted my brand to feel, but researching other restaurants with similar messages and the same name to make sure I did something different from them.

Sketches

I wanted the logo to be based on a typeface, so it was important to me to find one that fit my mood boards and would be easy to incorporate some of my sketch ideas. At this stage, I also began thinking about my deliverables, how they would look, and any ideas I was formulating.

roots restaurant branding identity community sustainable

Deliverables

The most important part of designing my brand collateral was color, logo, and pattern. My branding uses these elements to set a tone and establish a cohesive design.

Logo

My logo is simple and based on the typeface, Carillantine. It has many glyphs and decorative symbols, which I used throughout my branding. I adjusted the “T”, did some kerning, and stylized the “o’s” to look like seeds. Again, this was to bring it back to the keywords and subtly nod to the rooftop garden.

Color

The goal for my color palette was to be warm, inviting, and stylish. I kept that mood in mind as well as the colors of vegetables to get my rich earthy oranges and stylish bright greens.

Printed Materials

The printed materials include a seed packet (which would be given to each customer like an after-dinner mint), recycled kraft business cards, plastic-free takeout packaging, compost starter kit, and a outdoor menu.

Overview

The goal was to create a unique experience that would provide delicious foods to customers, involve them in the process of growing food, and teach them about food waste. Along with this, the concept seeks to combat a deeper issue of food insecurity experienced by millions around the country. The restaurant would provide seeds and financial donations to local community gardens to help them maintain and grow their own food. Through a partnership with local farms, the restaurant would help create support for small businesses in the community and provide fresh, healthy food to customers. The foundation of support and education within the community would leave a lasting positive impact on the Earth as well as the people we connect with.