The VkusVill chain of stores together with our team has carried out a radical redesign of its ready-to-eat cooking. The category now has recognizable illustrations and a logical and easy-to-understand design system.

TASK

The VkusVilla ready-to-cook assortment includes a variety of soups, salads, main courses and snacks – a total of about 200 items, which can be purchased in 1,270 stores and 200 micromarkets of the chain. The strengths of this segment in VkusVilla are high-quality formulations – with a minimum of preservatives and other “controversial” ingredients – and a wide range – in which everyone will find something to their liking. Until now, the category existed without a design system and without uniform display standards, and this greatly complicated the process of choosing and / or searching for ready-made dishes in the chain’s stores for buyers. At the same time, the main difficulties were with the search for dishes on the shelves (if the buyer purposefully went, for example, for borsch) and with the study of the composition of a particular dish (if the buyer wanted to get acquainted with a new position for himself). In addition, the division of the assortment into 8 collections used at that time was too cumbersome to perceive and did not work. As part of the business goal of expanding the segment, the retailer’s brand team assigned Ohmybrand the task of “re-inventing” the VkusVilla culinary category. It was required to visually improve this area in the chain’s stores by redesigning the packaging, to make the purchase process in the category convenient and pleasant for customers, to think over a system of differentiation by line, to take into account the various form factors used. At the same time, the target audience of VkusVilla is quite diverse – these are young people, pensioners, office workers, and housewives. But its core is made up of people who care about their health and proper nutrition – making a choice in favor of ready-made cooking, they expect high quality ingredients from it and compliance with the standards of preparation, storage and transportation of certain dishes.

SOLUTION

The first step in the workflow was to determine the classification of the assortment dishes and divide them into lines. As a result of our joint work, we have identified three areas: 1) “classic” with simple, familiar and understandable dishes; 2) “balance” with positions carefully thought out in terms of composition and KBZhU; 3) “gourmet” with interesting dishes for gastronomic enthusiasts and lovers of new things. Such a large division (as opposed to the existing 8 lines) turned out to be simple and clear for the target audience of stores and at the same time convenient for the project team in terms of working with the product matrix. The visual solution was based on the attitude of the VkusVilla team to its customers. “Conscientious work, attention to feedback and the desire to respond promptly to it – all this was felt in the VkusVilla team even at our agency-client meetings,” says project designer Valeria Pauli. – At all stages, from production to marketing, they put so much warmth into their work that we tried to make it come through the packaging design as well. This is how the concept “Warmth of our hands” was born. Its idea is that every dish presented in the VkusVilla culinary department is made by the hands of masters – people who are not indifferent to their work, who cook for us every day with love and care ”. “Warm” illustrations of hands, made in a deliberately simple technique, are complemented by elements of a slender and strict system of headings, texts and pictograms. This system is assembled in such a way that the information needed by buyers immediately attracts attention and that it is easy to compare it from different positions. Like many other products presented in VkusVilla, ready-made cookery has a “Traffic Light” – a special set of pictograms reflecting the levels of salt, sugar and fat. In the case of a content above the norm, the corresponding pictogram turns red, with an average value – in yellow, with a minimum value – in green. The “Traffic Light” system is unified for all categories of goods in the network. The background colors of the packaging (light green, dark blue and craft brown) and central illustrations are responsible for the differentiation of dishes by line. In addition, a differentiation has been introduced for their main ingredients. They are labeled with an intuitive color coding: red = beef, pink = pork, yellow = poultry, blue = fish and seafood, green = vegetables. The chosen design concept easily fits into different packaging formats, gathers them all into a single whole on store shelves and can be easily transferred to new products that appear in the assortment: the VkusVill design department can work with it without any questions.

RESULT

Products of the “ready-to-eat” category in updated packaging have already begun to appear in VkusVill stores. Once all of the retailer’s suppliers in this category switch to the new packaging, the shelves will be completely transformed.