Project Showcase: Valeo’s Pizza
Inspired by innovative branding trends and their expansion into a first brick-and-mortar store, our clients Christal and Eric started a pizza restaurant rebrand with us for their pizza company, Valeo's.
Valeo's has been around in Wisconsin for more than 50 years. Christal and Eric wanted to bring in their love for people and community into the refreshed brand. However, they also didn't want to lose the history Valeo's had built for generations.
We planned a way to create a distinction between the front of house and the kitchen without completely separating them. We planned out seating for customers. Then, we planned out how to strategically place the bar.
Pizza Restaurant Rebrand Logo Refresh
Christal and Eric didn't want to change their logo because they had just finished a refresh five years before we started our project. However, our team felt strongly that a refresh of the Valeo's logo was in order. The existing logo wasn't scalable, so it just wasn't usable in all of the ways that a logo needs to be able to be. Inspired by the original Valeo's neon sign, we updated their logo with a custom in-line font to create the logo you see today.Pizza Restaurant Rebrand Environmental Branding
Once we had updated the logo and worked with Christal and Eric to redefine the Valeo's brand direction, we got to work on the environmental branding for the new Valeo's space. We were thrilled we got to start our project with Valeo's before they even hung a sign out front. This meant we got to use the new brand direction as a filter for every customer touchpoint in the new store. Because this was the first dine-in Valeo's location, we needed to translate the Valeo's brand into a whole new kind of space that would attract the growing customer base they had earned from their decades of pizza-making. For the environmental branding of this pizza restaurant rebrand, we started with the customer journey. Our team took a layout of the building provided by the Valeo's architect and consulted on the best plans for the space.
We planned a way to create a distinction between the front of house and the kitchen without completely separating them. We planned out seating for customers. Then, we planned out how to strategically place the bar.
Pizza Restaurant Rebrand Interior Design
Next, we moved on into the planning for the interior design. We defined wall color, furniture, lighting, flooring, countertops, decor, and every other customer touchpoint in the interior. We selected everything based on the brand direction we had created at the beginning of the project. To fit in with the Valeo's brand, we picked out industrial lighting hung from rough wooden beams, black matte lamps, and glass pendant lighting indicative of old-school pizza parlours. We also mixed different types of flooring to create dimension in the space. Tile, natural hardwood and concrete define each section of the restaurant. Next, booth seating and four top tables were organized in the space to maximize seating and further showcase the brand. A red marquee sign on the wall spells out "SAY CHEESE" to create a memorable, Instagrammable space in the restaurant. At this point, our plans for the interior were under construction. So, we created window clings that would hide the empty storefront and communicate the brand to the public.
Pizza Restaurant Rebrand Food Photography
The next important step for the Valeo's branding was professional food photography. We took a trip up to Wisconsin to capture some really beautiful, mouthwatering images of the Valeo's menu items. As we proceeded through the graphic design and marketing for Valeo's, we worked these images into the menu, in the promotional materials and on the new website we were creating.
Pizza Restaurant Materials
The graphic design portion of this project included putting the new brand on every piece of the new restaurant materials from to-go cups to menus. We designed pizza boxes, kids cups, menu boards, print menus, and employee tee shirts all within the new brand direction.
Pizza Restaurant Website
One of the last parts of this project was to design and develop the Valeo's website.The goal of the site was to get people to come in and try the Valeo's pizza. We needed the user experience of their site to be guided by enticing food photography and encouraging calls to action. We started with wireframes and organized the new site. Then, we filled it with their brand fonts, brand colors, on-brand imagery and sayings in the Valeo's brand voice.
