Creating a memorable meal experience at home to maximize revenue.
There are many ways to enjoy your favorite quick-service restaurant (QSR) foods at home, like drive-thrus, delivery, and designated pick-up parking spots. But now QSR’s have found an even more convenient place to reach consumers, with thousands of locations, extended hours and unlimited parking – your local grocery store.Popular QSRs now sell prepackaged foods in grocery stores and large retailers like Target and Walmart. The list of brands who’ve secured a spot on the store shelf is large and keeps growing, including Starbucks, Taco Bell, Burger King, Chipotle, Subway, Chick-Fil-A, White Castle, P.F. Chang’s, Panera, California Pizza Kitchen, Nathan’s Famous, TGI Fridays, Cinnabon, Olive Garden and The Cheesecake Factory. Some well-known UK brands have also made a go at grocery stores, including LEON, Wasabi, Pizza Express and Nando’s.
Putting consumers’ money where their mouth is.
The global fast food and quick-service restaurant market reached $255.4 billion in 2023 and is forecast to surpass $370.8 billion by 2032. The US is the country that spends the most on fast food each year. The average American spends about $1,200 annually, equating to a total population spend of $110 billion. In the UK, quick-service restaurants saw a significant 13% rise in customer spending between 2022 and 2024. Leveraging a well-known QSR name and brand equity is a smart way to boost business for food manufacturers, QSRs and retailers. As a consumer, we know that if a trusted brand has their name on the label, then generally you know you’re getting a great product.
Ocado is an independent online grocer based in the UK that focuses on the home delivery of high-quality food, drink and household goods. Sales of QSR connected products, such as pizza, burgers and Asian-inspired meals, have soared 51% at the online grocer over the past year. Ocado has jumped on this demand and grown its restaurant-to-retail offering by 77%. Ocado chief commercial officer Amit Chitnis says this growing popularity is primarily driven by financial pressure on consumers. “The cost-of-living crisis led many consumers to seek out more budget-friendly ways to enjoy a treat at home,” says Chitnis.
Changes in consumer spending habits have also forced restaurants seek out additional revenue streams. Many restaurants have begun introducing more restaurant-branded condiments and sauces on grocery shelves, from QSR’s to Michelin-starred eateries. Bao, a Taiwanese restaurant in the UK known for irresistible bao buns, offers bottles of plum pickle ketchup and burnt chili sauce. And the UK’s Gymkhana, awarded two Michelin stars for its classic Indian cuisine, offers curry sauces at Whole Foods. Bottling sauces is also a great way to use up ingredients, reducing waste while boosting revenue. UK restaurant Fallow, which focuses on sustainability, offers a flavorful sriracha made with leftover English chilies, while Rocks Oysters offers an oyster XO sauce made with excess oysters.
Mixing the right ingredients to build brand equity.
At Contrast, a brand design agency I’m proud to call home, we’re always looking for ways to optimize a category and stretch a brand. But as brand guardians, we must ensure that an innovation pipeline fits within the brand’s DNA. Presenting the brand in a new way only works if it fits with the brand’s purpose and values.
Contrast has partnered with UK-based fast casual chain LEON to bring their popular foods to the grocery aisle. LEON’s mission is to prove that fast food can be good food by serving naturally fast food that not only tastes good but does you good, too. Leveraging well established LEON front of house brand equities, we created a roadmap to lead the way for a refreshed retail brand. Redefining the brand’s architecture and communication strategy allowed us to celebrate the brand’s restaurant heritage and create new distinctive brand assets for retail.
LEON now retails microwave-ready pouches of rice inspired by its popular rice boxes, as well as frozen chicken nuggets and waffle fries. We also launched LEON -branded sauces, hummus and even coffee. “Fiber-full wholegrain rice and grains have been at the heart of the LEON restaurant menu since 2004, in our year-round best-selling Rice Boxes. This launch into microwaveable rice takes a signature LEON dish and flavors and makes them more accessible, allowing more people to eat well, live well and be kind to the planet,” said Ashley Davis, Managing Director at LEON.
Recognizing that all consumers eat with their eyes.
It’s also important to make sure that any new brand-extension idea aligns with brand credibility in the eyes, and tastebuds, of consumers. Another client-partner with Contrast’s UK office is the popular Wasabi restaurant chain, focused on Japanese and East Asian-inspired fast food, especially sushi and bento. With a bright, clean, modern Japanese style, Wasabi offers a lunchtime alternative of authentic Japanese dishes that are immensely popular with hungry Londoners in search of something new, different and healthy.
Wasabi chose to cut its plastic use as it debuted a new look for ready-to-eat meal packaging across its supermarket grocery range. The refreshed branding is featured across the full Wasabi grocery line, including meal-for-ones, sides and ramen. Contrast created a whole new design, including revamped typography and updated images on bento box meals. Wasabi also changed the packaging format on its sides range to drive more differentiation between those products and its meal-for-one items, and having listened to consumer feedback, moved from a sachet to a dipping pot in its gyoza range.
Wasabi grocery marketing manager Annabel Stephens says: “We’re excited to reveal our new packaging design, which puts our delicious food front and center. Our tasty new design is an evolution to strengthen and evolve our visual identity and brand touchpoints whilst staying true to our Wasabi roots.”
Serving up distinctive design and satisfying flavors.
From social media to popular cooking shows, flavorful food is a fan favorite that spans all ages, cultures and lifestyles. As we develop a taste for more distinctive and diverse food, we hold a lot of trust in the brands we know and love to eat. So, why wouldn’t we want to bring that flavor experience home?
At Contrast, we believe in the power of distinctive creative assets and contrasting from the crowd, which is why we have successfully delivered many QSR brands into the grocery channel. We are experts in the moment of purchase in both the digital and physical retail space, and we can seamlessly weave in the visual and verbal language to tap into discerning consumers’ taste for something extraordinary.
– Claudette Munroe, Managing Director at Contrast
With offices in Chicago, London and Hong Kong, Contrast is a brand design agency that believes big ideas come from small, highly specialized teams. Contrast knows the brands that get the most attention are the ones that pay full attention to customer needs. So, Contrast draws on its 30+ years of combined expertise to develop distinctive strategic brand design, from messaging and identity, to packaging and point-of-sale, to online and in-store activation, and beyond. And Contrast works closely with your team to develop breakthrough creative that defines, differentiates, and drives meaningful results for your business. To learn more, visit TheBrandContrast.com.
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