As part of an expansion to its Food & Beverage portfolio, Jay Flaxman Studio has designed a new brand identity for Made in Oldstead, the premium home-dining on demand brand from Michelin Starred Chef Tommy Banks.
The restaurant business took a heavy blow when Covid-19 hit the UK in March 2020. Many closed their doors and furloughed their staff, quietly waiting for the pandemic to ease. Michelin Star Chef Tommy Banks and his team got to work. Having successfully run Roots in York and taken The Black Swan pub in Oldstead from small local eatery to a Michelin-Starred, 4 AA Rosette restaurant and winner of Best Fine-Dining Restaurant in the World 2017 (beating Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck and Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir, Best Restaurant in the UK 2018 and UK’s Best Fine-Dining Restaurant un 2020 by TripAdvisor). Tommy decided to create Made in Oldstead, an on-demand fine-dining experience that would deliver the finest dishes to anywhere in the UK.
As the lockdowns continued and the desire for at-home indulgences soared, Made in Oldstead was fulfilling 1500 orders a week. A new 3 or 5 course menu would be created by Tommy each month and promoted via social media. Selling at between £55 – £135 (with wine) a business that had started as a ‘stop-gap’, was fast becoming a very successful venture in its own right.
A year later and with over 3000 loyal customers, the brand approached Jay Flaxman Studio to develop a more cohesive brand identity and importantly, devise a strategy that would steer the brand out of lockdown. The challenge was to ensure the offer would not only continue to remain relevant and prosper once restaurants had reopened, but also to sit side-by-side with the groups other bricks and mortar restaurant experiences without cannibalising their offer.
Jay carried out a thorough strategic evaluation of our brand, interviewing stakeholders, reviewing our product and service offering, consulting industry reports and presenting insights into consumer behaviour and the dramatically changing cultural landscape. At every stage Jay worked closely with our team, spending time on-site and in our restaurants to gain first-hand experience of our offer.
We then embarked on a full rebrand with Jay that tied together the strategic recommendations, a redesign our brand identity and packaging, as well as a new visual direction for our website and digital communications.
We were impressed with Jay’s ability to strike a rapport with our whole team, explaining the process at each step and delivering against a very wide scope. The end result is both a brand strategy and identity that has given us confidence that we have the best chance of success as we relaunch the brand, invigorating our current audience and engaging with a new one. Jay’s commitment, expertise and attention detail have made for a very productive, efficient and invaluable partnership.” Jay Flaxman was retained as Strategic Creative Director across the Tommy Banks group of brands.
Jay Flaxman, “There is a realignment of values going on at all levels of dining. Our strategy and creative execution centred around that necessary shift. Shared moments are what really matter to the consumer, it’s not about the Chef.”
The primary logotype was devised to separate and highlight the word OLDSTEAD, facilitating mulitple prefix to signal the various initiatives that originated from the family farm. An additional brand device was created around the farms postcode ‘YO61’ to clearly put Oldstead on the map and signal the pride the brand has in its roots. The ‘O’ of Oldstead was also used to create an interlocking pattern that expanded the graphic toolkit and provided an abstract shape that could be applied to a range of collateral – the shapes suggest the rolling hills and lanes around Oldstead but also the forward motion associated with on-demand delivery.
Jay led the creative campaign that ultimately won the contract to deliver bespoke hampers for fixtures at Lords Cricket Ground, the incumbent provider was Fortnum & Mason.
