Reviving a cherished queso brand dripping with nostalgia and originality
Pancho's, a beloved restaurant turned heritage queso dip brand, had recently redesigned their packaging with another agency and released in market with some not-so-great customer feedback. Consumers – new and old – felt the redesigned packaging lacked personality and found the product photography bland and unappealing (not ideal for a food brand with a rich history of flavor and word-of-mouth marketing).
When they realized the missed opportunity, they reached out to Gel to help realign their package design and prepare the brand for a national rollout.
When redesigning Pancho’s mark, we pulled inspiration from both the newest logo design and the restaurant’s original logo to make for a powerful combination of local legend meets national icon. This helped retain feelings of tradition, history, and belonging while appealing to the broader masses with this bold, stand out logo.
While updating the packaging, we knew we wanted to highlight the mouth-watering nature of the product itself. We conducted a product photoshoot, that captured the gooey and tasteful aspects of the product, then highlighted them as the hero on each of the product’s labels.
With the logo in place, we created an identity system consisting of authentic and bold typography, paired with hand written lettering, colorful textures, and beautiful imagery. This was then applied to each product flavor to create recognition across each of Pancho’s extensive product flavors.
While we brought back elements from the original brand identity, we didn’t want to entirely disregard the most recent packaging. Our new package design offered a step forward for existing customers, but also created a cohesive system rooted in story and taste appeal for new customers to enjoy.
We wanted to put forth the same fresh, vibrant appeal when expanding the branding beyond the package. This meant putting the food front and center, supported by colorful textures and illustrations that could easily be applied across all sorts of brand collateral.