Tiendas Chata

Designing cohesion for a brand built over generations

Brand StrategyCohesive IdentityExperience Design
2023@RedBox
Tiendas Chata brand project — hero image

Tiendas Chata, a well-known Mexican food brand with over 60 years of history, was transitioning from a family-owned company to a national operation. As part of that growth, they began a retail standardization effort to unify the look and feel of their physical stores. However, despite their strong market recognition, they lacked a cohesive visual language across formats, products and touchpoints.

Challenge

How might we design a flexible yet authentic brand system that honors the legacy of Tiendas Chata while preparing it for a new generation of expansion?

Approach

Though the initial project was focused on physical materials and retail design, I was brought in when the team realized the brand’s portfolio was visually inconsistent. My role was to develop an extended brand language using the existing logo and early design explorations as a base.

I studied the brand’s history, their most iconic product lines, and what made them recognizable in their hometown of Culiacán. Through conversations with the retail design team, I aligned with the strategic direction and helped shape a graphic system that reflected the same spirit and goals.

Outcome

Tiendas Chata began standardizing their stores and rolling out new packaging that clarifies their offer and strengthens brand consistency across locations. Although this wasn’t in the original project scope, the impact was immediate and well received by the client, the solution felt both natural and strategically sound.

Process Highlights

Brand language expansion

Extended the brand identity by creating new color palettes, selecting typographies, and designing graphic assets and layout components to unify packaging, signage and in-store materials.

Overview of the logo and brand applications for the final result

Contextual sensitivity

Grounded visual decisions in the brand’s cultural heritage and customer familiarity while supporting a new positioning that reflected Tiendas Chata’s ambition and range.

Pictures of local context and how those inspired the base graphics for the brand

Flexible system design

Developed a system capable of adapting across diverse categories including proteins, ready-to-eat meals, traditional Mexican dishes and pantry staples.

Flexible packaging system that addapts to different formats

Deliverables

Produced a brand language document, packaging mockups, retail communication templates and signage components to support physical rollout.

Complementary brand expressions like merch, napkins and ready-to-eat packaging

Collaboration and leadership

Worked closely with two consultants leading the strategic narrative and an industrial designer developing the physical store experience.

Renders of the new space populated with brand expressions like screens, signaling, brand messages and decoration

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RedBox Academy brand project — hero image

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