ROOTED CASE STUDY/ / 2020

A meal kit that might just turn your thumbs green. Rooted is a subscription service that allows customers to create delicious vegetarian meals and start a personal vegetable garden right from their own homes.

Group Roles:

Project Manager: Lily Tooher (Left)

Production Manager: Samantha Petty (Middle)

Presenter & Creative Lead: Madison Stabinger (Right)

Beginning Process:

2020 has definitely been a turbulent year for us all for many many reasons. So when presented with the challenge of creating a take out service while keeping our current climate in mind we wanted to focus on these three key points.

Firstly, with people stuck at home social distancing this year, the feeling of loneliness and isolation has gone up. Our goal is to give our customers a new form of entertainment that would help not only give our customers something to do together , but also allow them to hone a new skill in the process.

Secondly, food waste has always been an issue in the United States but due to the pandemic the issue has been exacerbated. In the beginning of the semester we found out that 40% of food goes to waste every year in America. A big component of this is over estimating the ingredients needed for cooking when grocery shopping. It’s hard to know exactly how much food will be enough for the week and most people would rather have too much than too little. Another issue is farmers having to throw out the excess produce they have each month because with our current situation it’s more costly to donate it than throw it away. It doesn’t help that there’s been less demand from restaurants due to many of them having to temporarily close. Since this issue only seems to be increasing we wanted to find a way to use these leftover vegetables from local farmers so that they don’t go to waste

The last problem we wanted to address was sustainability. Plastic and styrofoam containers create waste that we can’t get rid of even when ‘recycled.’ Many people have the right intentions when it comes to recycling, but in reality, only 12% of all plastic has been incinerated leaving the rest in landfills and the ocean. In order to reduce our carbon footprint, we searched to find a packaging solution that focused on reducing and reusing rather than recycling.

What is our is our product: (a brief statement)

The Veggie Kit combines cooking and gardening to create a relaxing yet entertaining at home experience. It is a customizable subscription service where the customer gets a wooden box filled with fresh ingredients and produce so that the buyer can make vegetarian meals in their own home.

The customer can choose how often they would like to receive a veggie kit whether it be weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. The buyer has 12 to 15 vegetarian meals to choose from on our website as well as 2–3 infused drink options. Each box comes with exact amounts of ingredients to make the cooking process less stressful. In addition the box comes with an optional gardening component that includes a starter kit which teaches customers how to grow their own produce.

Solution for boredom: Our subscription box allows people who are quarantining together to spend some time away from their screens, away from watching the news, and instead be with one another. Cooking itself can be therapeutic and a stress reliever but it also allows people to come together and have a source of entertainment that’s not the TV or their computers. For people who are quarantining alone, cooking is a great activity to not only take up time when days are feeling repetitive but also be an act of self care with people feeling isolated now more than ever.

Another aspect of the Rooted box is the option to include a gardening kit so you can start a vegetable garden of your own. This can be done with friends and family or as an activity just on your own. Gardening is similar to cooking by being an outlet for any stress or anxieties in your life which seems to be a common theme this year.

Solution for food waste: Rooted partners with local farms to get fresh produce for our cooking crates. Here’s how it works: Since Covid began, restaurants everywhere have had to close or slow down business. Many of them purchased their vegetables in bulk from farms in PA, but due to our current climate, the demand for produce has drastically dropped leaving farmers with an overflow. That’s where we come in. Rooted takes this overflow of produce and creates recipes based on what’s in season, and sends it to the front doors of our customers. This guarantees our customers get fresh locally sourced products while helping farms get rid of the extra produce that would have otherwise gone to waste. Even further, we measure out the exact amount of ingredients that are required per recipe to make it as easy as possible for our customers. This way WE cut back on food waste and YOU aren’t left with half an onion sitting in your fridge for weeks.

Solution for plastic waste: When realizing how much plastic waste is produced during the lifecycle of an average takeout meal, we wanted to come up with a more sustainable solution to exporting our product. Instead of using plastic containers we decided to choose a wooden crate as our carrying vessel that is either reused by Rooted, or further used by the consumer. The wooden crate can either be picked up after the consumer is finished unloading their ingredients, or it can be used as a planter either in their home or a nearby community garden. In addition to the overall box, we are using glass jars for ingredients that will also be reused by the company.

With this in mind we sought out three different user personas to base our brand off of.

Personas:

Competitive analysis

After establishing our audience, we needed to look at other cooking kit services and what they were offering. We asked ourselves…

Okay, so why not just get Hello Fresh?

Rooted cuts down on food waste, plastic waste, and gives you a form of entertainment whereas HelloFresh does not.

The way we see it, as a customer you can either buy a subscription to Hello Fresh or to Rooted. With HelloFresh you pick a meal plan and receive 2 to 5 meals and recipes. However, HelloFresh packages can come with up to 30 pieces of plastic waste in one week of meals. You get a few meals to make, but there is no entertainment factor and nowhere to put all those thick brown paper bags after you’re done. Rooted implements reusable crates and glass bottles for their packaging and gives customers the option to get their crates & bottles picked back up for a discount on their next box. Rooted offers the same variety of recipes and meal plans that HelloFresh does, but it is a cheaper, more environmentally friendly option, and provides a way to grow (literally) with your friends, family, and community.

Process: (Brainstorming)

We spent weeks researching our solutions for this restaurant project, developing the user personas, and solidifying our ideas to create the backbone for our company. Although, naturally, different ideas for color, type, illustrations, and layout started to form in the background, we weren’t ready to focus on the visual branding until we had established a name, tagline, list of deliverables, and wireframe for our project.

Early concept sketches for packaging.

Our team used Miro, a third party site, to collaborate during Covid.

Wireframe for website.

Name Generation:

When brainstorming names for our brand we decided to look up as many synonyms that related to gardening and cooking as possible. With these we each came up with names and little phrases that worked for our brand on our own and then came together on zoom to discuss them. After discussing some of our favourites like Regreen, Veggie kit, Home Grown, Green to Go, Produce Pack, The Cooking Crate, and Rooted, we decided that Rooted had the most potential to be memorable and recognizable.

Tagline:

After establishing Rooted as the name of our brand, coming up with a memorable tagline came pretty easy. On the same zoom meeting, we started using the synonyms we had already found and generated the following phrases to compliment our brand.

We decided on From Farm to Fridge because it worked well with our brand name and gave insight on what our company is about.

Final Product:

With the name, tagline, and basis of the company decided we went on to individually design the packaging and overall look of Rooted.

Lily Tooher:

Lily Tooher on Behance

When coming up with my branding, I knew that it was important for the subscription service to have a rustic farmhouse feel. However, I still wanted everything to look modern and bright to keep up with current trends. With this in mind, I went with a vibrant color pallet but kept the shades more natural and muted. When it came to textures, I wanted to incorporate wood into the design because it would be common throughout our deliverables and a theme of growth and vegetation. Initially, when coming up with logo designs, I was playing with the imagery of a fork and a carrot making an X, but after more consideration decided to go in a different direction. I took inspiration from Louise Fili and with a similar format to her food packaging and logos. I used etchings of different vegetables that I found online to create a mock still life in the center of my logo. Although I was happy with the black and white logo, I couldn’t get it to work once I started incorporating color. I went back and forth for a while but eventually knew that I needed to develop my own illustration. I decided on a tomato plant since it represents food and gardening and conveys the idea of fresh vegetables right from the vine. Using the same format, I created the final logo that’s shown above.

Logo Progression

When it came to deliverables I knew that I would need to be making a crate and a recipe card but, I wanted to add some additional pieces for the website. I ended up making a sticker, tote bag, and face mask for a merchandise tab on my website. Seventy percent of the proceeds from the merchandise would go to Philabundance, a hunger relief organization and a proud member of Feeding America on a mission to make nutritious food accessible to all.

Madison Stabinger:

Madison Stabinger on Behance

When tasked with designing a logo for this brand, I knew I wanted a logo that would feel established and nostalgic. After collecting folders of vintage imagery and type, I started to discover vintage crate labels and loved the look of hand painted signage. I ran into a lot of issues when trying to make the logo look like a crate label so I decided to just take certain elements from them like the color and hand painted imagery and mix them with simple type. The tomatoes and carrot I hand painted and then scanned into photoshop. The word Rooted is slightly overlapped by one tomato to give the feeling that it is grounded/ connected and represents the community aspect of our brand.

Logo Process

When moving on to the deliverables I added the logo to these glass jars where I decided to not add any additional elements due to the fact that they are meant to be reused and different ingredients could be placed inside. The crate I chose for the mockup has more of a vintage style and I added the tomatoes from the logo onto the side with a distressed effect. Below that is the seed paper & instructions for the seed paper which I put on a recycled tag that’s texture fit the theme I was aiming for. On the right is my website where I mixed elements of vintage imagery and color with simple type and allow customers to easily navigate through meals. The recipe card I printed out, assembled, and photographed whereas the rest of the mockups I created in Photoshop. I always loved flipping through old cook books, so I created the instructions on the recipe card to be a small flip through of directions and adding a vintage style photo above it. This recipe card comes in a red envelope which makes it feel special and is sealed with a sticker containing the imagery in the logo. Lastly I created the tote bag which is an extra that could be included if requested online.

Samantha Petty:

Samantha Petty on Behance

I wanted to create an identity for rooted that was fun, playful, and full of bright colors. With these characteristics in mind, I also wanted it to have a hint of sophistication and organization including simple and easy navigation. For the logo I wanted to capture elements that would combine the concept of cooking and gardening. Therefore, I chose a simplistic fork to be centered in the middle of the composition surrounded by two radishes with roots stemming from the bottom. I used the artist Louise Fili and her exquisite logos as inspiration for the overall composition while adjusting each element to fit comfortably when complete.

Logo Process

Our packaging was designed in response to plastic waste and specifically elongating the lifecycle of anything we created to be reused in some way. The crate in which the customer would receive after ordering off the website could one be used as a small garden in the comfort of your home, or it would be picked up and reused for the next customer. The glass jars are used to hold all of the exact ingredients that come with your meal and will be washed and reused by Rooted.

Conclusion:

What this year has taught us all is that life can be quite unpredictable. It puts into perspective what’s important to us. This project has given us insight into how food waste, plastic pollution, and food insecurity have been exacerbated by the events of this year, teaching us how important it is to take care of our families, friends, community, and planet.