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THE CHALLENGE:

Cocina Verde, the only online raw, vegan, gourmet meal delivery company in Buenos Aires, hired Truth Beauty Now to help re-position itself in a meat-eating culture and grow its business.  This is a culture where the organic, wellness, and nutrition movement is just at the beginning.  Additionally, we were challenged with creating a 360 brand identity campaign that works in both English and Spanish, as many customers are ex-pats and speak English only.

THE TRUTH:

There is a small, but growing audience of nutrition-conscious urban Argentinians interested in healthy eating and organic, raw, vegan, and gluten-free foods. But there is very little access to this kind of food on the go, and virtually no other company making quality gourmet level foods of this type, much less delivering them to people’s doors fresh weekly. While Cocina Verde jumped on this business opportunity at the right time and built the biggest raw, vegan, gourmet meal delivery company in Buenos Aires with DYI blood sweat, and tears, the business itself was not generating the number of orders to grow it to the next level.

 

THE BEAUTY:

In addition to providing consulting on a wide range of things from isolating key business challenges, brainstorming new business partnerships, exploring new offerings, like juicing, and recommending sustainability practices to incorporate in Cocina Verde’s day-to-day operations, our first task was clear.  We needed to get to the truth of why the Founder, Kara Bauer, moved to Argentina from America speaking no Spanish at the time and knowing not a soul there, to start Cocina Verde from scratch. What inspired her to make such a radical move?

What would keep her inspired to fulfill her mission?  What crystallized after several important interviews with the Founder, Kara Bauer was that she founded Cocina Verde as a way to manifest her dream to transform lives through nutrition, great food, and education and that she literally had a dream one night that Argentina was the place to do it.  A key insight that surfaced in our discussions was that LIFE itself and BEING ALIVE to enjoy it was cause for great celebration for all human beings. This key insight also relates to the type of food Cocina Verde is committed to making and delivering daily to Argentinians. Raw food is considered by the nutrition movement to be “live” food as it’s loaded with active enzymes, nutrients, minerals, antioxidants, and vitamins. A brand tag line and graphic oeuvre was born out of these discussions:  It’s Great to Be Alive. Or in Spanish: Es Genial Estar Vivo.

An entire 360 bi-lingual campaign was then developed around this sentiment. And a woodcut logo was created and recommended to convey the raw and homemade brand virtues.  While good food photography was recommended to communicate gourmet and taste appeal.

The woodcut logo and tagline are stamped on the front of its delivery bags as well a stamped company promise: “Raw, Vegan, Gourmet Meals Delivered Fresh to your Body Daily. www.cocinaverde.com” and in Spanish: Comida Raw Vegana/Gourmet Llega Fresca A Tu Cuerpa. www.cocinaverde.com. 

From there we created woodcuts of individual raw food ingredients that are used regularly in Cocina Verde raw dishes, from a cantankerous carrot to a blithering beet. This concept along with its woodcut raw, homemade look and its talking veggies and fruits were applied via letterpress to achieve that raw homemade look as well.  Ann Lemon, the Art Director, not only came up with and hand-cut all the woodcuts herself out of linoleum blocks, but she also enrolled her alum design teacher and cohort, Ray Nichols, to use his old letterpress in Delaware, www.leadgrafitti.com to hand make the business cards, stationery, and posters.  The papers used are all made of post-consumer content and the posters are hand letters pressed on old Argentinian newspapers dating back to the ’60s.

These graphic elements will grace the meal delivery packaging and newly overhauled website which are still in development.

During our project, there was a re-branding launch party at a swank Buenos Aires club, catered by Cocina Verde, complete with branded table tents, porta-banners and gift bags containing Cocina Verde branded peelers, recipe booklets, refrigerator magnets, etc. that Truth Beauty Now created as part of its identity package.

THE RESULTS:

After the re-branding effort, Cocina Verde’s delivery orders doubled. Cocina Verde is in the process of investigating a new business delivery infrastructure that’s being rolled out and tested over the course of this year to determine the next steps. This will be applied to a beta version test site using the website graphic template elements Truth Beauty Now developed.