Brand & Corporate Communication

Culinary curators bringing together carefully chosen rural producers and urban customers

From our first meeting, we were seduced by the business model presented by the two partners, Cristi and Stefan. They knew well the Saxon villages from southern Transylvania and the local producers who prepared authentic food products for them and their families for generations, using recipes little known outside this region. Their idea was to organize these small local producers and farmers in a strong network and to support them all year round to reach a wider audience than that of the usual tourists visiting their villages for a few weeks in the summer and winter – specifically, urban people. Through e-commerce, home and office delivery, and presence at local and international events, the start-up aimed to create a viable alternative to standardized food products for people who value natural, authentic products, and also want to encourage fair trade and the local communities preserve their rich and diverse culinary traditions. Saxon family recipes from Transylvania, long-forgotten tastes, mix of ingredients or cooking techniques were discovered by Cristi and Stefan, revived, presented to an appreciative audience and turned into a lucrative business for hundreds of people.

Brand identity inspired by rich, unique local traditions

The Transylvanian Saxons are people of German ethnicity who were settled in Transylvania (Siebenbürgen in German, a name referring to the seven most significant fortified towns in the region) in waves, starting from the mid-12th century until mid-19th century. Their story and traditions gave us the ingredients to create the brand identity – name, logo, chromatic scheme, typography, visuals, elements of verbal identity –, by extracting and reinterpreting relevant symbols and concepts from the history, crafts and culture of the area.

Kredenz defines the style in which many of the pieces of furniture we find in traditional Saxon households in Siebenbürgen were made – wood carved, hand painted cabinets, buffets, wall shelves, chests, tables and chairs. The name Kredenz immediately indicates the main geographical placement of the products, while its sonority inspires stability, durability, determination, and the belief that good things take time and patience to be done.

The label sells the product, but also sells emotion

We designed the label series by product category, starting with defining color codes for each category, in order to make it easy for the customer to identify the products on the shelf or on the website: red for preserved vegetable spreads, purple for jams and comfitures, black for bulk products, etc. Short texts on the labels remind people of how a grandmother or someone from the Transylvanian countryside would speak, which gives personality and warmth to the brand.

By the book

Consistency may seem a luxury for a new brand developed by young entrepreneurs, but with Kredenz things were done by the book. The brand book covered the essentials for this stage, and lots of attention was focused on the copywriting guidelines, as an important part of the brand personality comes from the short text inserts treated as familiar conversation fragments. It is as if the client and the producer are engaged in a light conversation about the way the jam, sauce or zacusca is used in local recipes, how yummy it is, about the ingredients or sweet memories from the childhood. The products are sold to a Romanian and international clientele via the e-shop kredenz.ro.