Love what you eat.

Creating elevated restaurant branding, brand identity, brand messaging, and experience branding for a whole new concept.

Our client asked us to help develop a new three-meal, polished casual restaurant concept from the ground up. The concept needed to have a distinctive brand and personality, but be flexible enough to take on the local community character, chef’s voice, and local flavors of whatever market it entered across the Midwest.

Hospitality

CHARACTER

Community

PURPOSE

Chef-curated

FOOD & BEVERAGE

Local

SPIRIT

Everyday Kitchen bar scene with barstools and copper pendant lights.

Woman laughing with wine and appetizer at table in Everyday Kitchen.

Strategy.

Partnering with a New York-based restaurant consultant, we developed an elevated American grill concept anchored in local ingredients and a spitfire grill that would serve as any location’s “hearth,” creating warmth, good feelings, and a sense of locality from welcome to table. The name, Everyday Kitchen, was designed to evoke that familial community welcome as well as designate the any-daypart appeal of the concept.

We developed the brand identity, name, positioning, menu suite, table scape, uniform design, environmental design (in partnership with two interior design firms), signage and wayfinding, and marketing materials. We also art-directed the photography and established the overall look, tone, and voice of the brand.

Results.

Opened in the heat of the COVID pandemic in June 2020, Everyday Kitchen Madison has become an award-winning pillar of excellence, deliciousness, and warmth in the highly competitive food & beverage town of Madison, WI.

Everyday Kitchen coasters in teal and orange on marble table.

Everyday Kitchen Menu suite on wooden table.

“Cheryl and her team at SIGNAL make brand work actionable and useful — far beyond the marketing function often associated with branding. SIGNAL’s rigor in research and ability to define a brand through their unique platform format — which then serves as a cohesive filter for experiential, operational, and financial decisions — has proven an effective tool and ‘North Star’ to our restaurant work and the development of the project overall.”
Julia Heyer
Heyer Performance

Principal Restaurant Consultant

Visual vocabulary that brings the brand story to life.

We enlisted Louisville poster artist Brad Vetter to create a poster and graphic system that would celebrate the restaurant’s local purveyors as sourcing “rock stars” and to create a visual vocabulary that imbued the brand promise, “Love What You Eat,” with creative expression and emotional heft.

Everyday Kitchen Cafe environmental branding graphics displayed on charcoal background.

Everyday Kitchen Environmental Marketing local vendor posters displayed in frames.

Salad with blueberries, strawberries, and avocado in a bowl with copper silverware on wooden table.

Photo style that celebrates local ingredients.

We partnered with regional food & beverage photographer Sarah Jane Webb and food stylist Sara Rounsavall to showcase food that was beautiful yet approachable, featuring ingredients that were prepared and plated with appreciation, care, and love.

Hummus brûlée with bread, peppers, and vegetables.

Everyday Kitchen cocktails with garnishes.

Toasted pumpkin seeds in bowls with herbs on wooden table.

Brand expression designed to stretch.

We created a dynamic visual system that could simultaneously reinforce the Everyday Kitchen brand consistently to build equity while allowing for campaign, cafe, and local customization for additional locations.