Food in Yorkshire is an exciting prospect. New shops, restaurants and pop-ups are springing to life every week, so it’s now more important than ever to stand out among the jostling crowd. Take one look at Leeds Independent Food Festival and it’s easy to see why investment in design and digital is such a vital component of running a modern food and drink business.
There’s a plethora of innovative, forward thinking brands out there – look no further than Bundobust, Tall Boys, Roland’s, Friends of Ham, Belgrave, Sheaf Street Cafeteria and Mrs Atha’s to see why an individual, distinctive brand is necessary if you want to take a decent bite out of this fruitful market.
Aside from delicious food, developing a strong brand is one of the most important elements of building a successful food and drink business. Strong branding distinguishes a business from its competitors and represents the style, direction and ethos of the company.
A strong brand frames products as high-end, affordable, mainstream or niche, and can help a restaurant, deli or farm stop reach new customers. Updating or refreshing a brand with a new website, new digital strategy and developed logo is a worthwhile investment that will help establish or maintain your position in the vibrant local food scene.
Branding doesn’t just mean the visual identity of a brand – the logo and colours scheme for example. An important, but much overlooked aspect of branding are the words and the manner in which a brand communicates with its audience.
Language, tone and content are just as important as aesthetics in shaping perceptions and opinions, and getting this wrong can be jarring, or simply make a brand seem boring and generic. A trendy street food brand could be enhanced by a cheeky, conversation menu, while a high-end deli could use its website and social media to show off about the rarity and organic nature of its stock.
Digital marketing and social media can be powerful weapons in a food brand’s arsenal, with a potential audience of thousands of customers. Instagram is an effective asset for restaurants as it is appealing to a generation who seem to gain as much enjoyment from photographing their food as from eating it. Showing off spectacular, delicious looking dishes on this platform is an excellent way of spreading awareness and getting more customers through the door.
Facebook and Twitter can also be useful platforms, not only for spreading the good news about a new menu item – but as a customer communication channel. These platforms allow food businesses to speak directly with the people who frequent their establishments to find out what is going well, and what could be improved.
If you’re looking for help with branding, digital marketing or web design in Leeds, Marvellous is a digital agency specialising in food and drink. From Indian street food kits to award winning cheese purveyors, Marvellous have designed packaging, designed and developed websites and written content to help modern food and drink brands succeed online.