Behind the Brand

as a brand in the food and beverage industry today’s high-visibility culture presents a challenge for business owners. For Jeremy Staub, founder and owner of Box 8 Creative, Connecticut’s only niche food and beverage branding agency, it is a challenge happily accepted.

Founded in 2009, Box 8 has made its name helping Connecticut-based companies shape their identities. There’s no one too small or too big, and the creative group touts a list of clients ranging from single-owner food trucks to large restaurant groups. And although there are a variety of graphic designers in the state, only Box 8 has chosen to focus on creative work and branding for the food and beverage industry.

The company’s founder and owner, Jeremy Staub, started out doing graphic design work for local law firms and real estate companies. The focus on restaurants began shortly thereafter, when Jeremy started working with the Barteca restaurant group (which owns Bartaco and Barcelona) to clean up their design. As the chain of restaurants grew and chefs left to start their own food ventures, Jeremy was there to help them with their branding. In 2011, Box 8 began to grow, and now includes six full-time staff members and a rotating pack of office dogs.

Box 8’s work goes well beyond logo and website design. They’re most passionate about opportunities to create comprehensive branding systems that capture the essence of a restaurant or product, while highlighting the characteristics that make them unique. For example, NoRA Cupcakes first approached the group about a new website, but after an initial research period and conversation, Box 8 helped them refine their entire visual identity. Their new logo features NoRA’s signature pink and black colors but also incorporates a marker like

those used in online maps to pay visual homage to the fact that the company’s name is a reference to their location in Middletown. The group also designed the cheeky “Taste Bud Advisory” stickers stuck to the back of every cupcake box to add a cool, consistent visual feel. It’s small details like this that help fill in the big picture of who a company is, what makes them special, and, ultimately, why customers would want to engage with them.

Focusing on this type of detail is important, as people are increasingly eating and buying based on visuals. Box 8 notes that 70 percent of people engage with a restaurant for the first time on their mobile devices, to view menus, see the food, and get a feel for the atmosphere. The right branding can even help to boost sales; after updating their packaging with Box 8, Canton’s Giv Coffee sold out of bags a year ahead of time.

Increasingly, restaurateurs are eschewing the more traditional restaurant style details – the white tablecloths, candlelit tables, and cursive script menus – in favor of bolder, more experimental trends, like high-quality food photography and a large social media presence.

“Operators are younger now and typically more daring,” Jeremy said.

Box 8 is also seeing greater business from established restaurant groups looking for a makeover. To Box 8, crafting a modern brand identity that echoes a company’s past is just as welcome a challenge as starting from scratch.

“We want to take brands that have been around for 10 to 15 years and make them more like themselves,” Jeremy said. “The idea is to make the brand look timeless and minimalistic, clean, and classic.”

Box 8 has expanded its range and scope as local clients grow to distribute their products nationally and internationally, and as the group has taken on more clients from outside Connecticut in markets like Boston, New York, and even Atlanta. When asked what is particularly special about the food scene here in Connecticut, the group expresses in resounding agreement that, if you want to see restaurants doing it right, now is the time and Connecticut is the place. Given the affluence of the state and its location between New York and Boston, the foodie culture in Connecticut has come to demonstrate the level of quality of either of the larger cities.

Looking ahead, while restaurants and food trucks have been and will always be central to the Box 8 niche, the company has welcomed opportunities to widen their role in the food and beverage industry by taking on several productbased clients. The group has developed custom branding and packaging for distribution companies like Calabro Cheese, Whole Harmony, and Giv Coffee. Jeremy said the group looks forward to getting involved with a few of the industry’s rapidly expanding subsets, including breweries and distilleries.

Regardless of who approaches Box 8 or what they sell, the most important thing to Jeremy and the group in taking on potential clients is the match. Their favorite past projects are those during which they had highly interactive and

collaborative relationships with their clients. Box 8 also has a shared passion for the potential to positively impact the state, and the group appreciates the value that clients like Two Roads Brewery (Stratford) and Brewport (Bridgeport) provide, both as employers and as contributors to the local industry.

While standing out is a principle goal in branding, one gets the sense when talking to Box 8 that we are all in this together. “We would call them our friends,” Jeremy said about the nature of their relationship with their eclectic and growing list of clients. “We get happy birthday texts,” added Sam Angermann, a member of the Box 8 creative team, as a point of pride.•