As we sit mired in the awfulness of the pandemic and so much of 2020 at large, we’re grateful when we come across something like the startup Eat Offbeat—a proverbial light in the dark, providing sustenance in more ways than one.
Co-founded by Lebanese immigrant siblings Manal and Wissam Kahi, Eat Offbeat began when Manal found herself in search for some off her favorite foods from back home—and “realized the former refugee communities that have resettled in New York are an extraordinary and largely untapped source for incredible cooking.”
The siblings partnered with a Michelin-starred chef, and now bring extraordinary food from around the world via catering and meal boxes created by former refugee and immigrant chefs that the initiative recruited and trained. The company thus aims to share extraordinary food that is “off the beaten path” to so many Americans, with cuisine hailing from Afghanistan to Venezuela to Sri Lanka and back again.
Natasha Jen and her team of Jonathan Katav and Diego Prestes created the identity and brand ecosystem, based on two goals from Eat Offbeat—to broaden its offerings from catering to individual customer meal kits, and to “to recenter the brand positioning to a more aspirational narrative, without losing the humanitarian aspect of its business model,” Pentagram writes.
“The brand strategy highlights Eat Offbeat as a unique and adventurous choice that expands palates with new tastes—and with a feeling of family, togetherness and home. This is captured in the positioning, which describes the company’s offer as ‘Global Homecooking’—bringing the best global home cooking home to you.”
For the type, Pentagram turned to Type Type, and the foundry’s TT Trailers Bold and TT Commons. For the mark, Jen and co. focused on visually depicting the notion of migration, with a well-defined sense of motion. The color palette, meanwhile, hints at the marvelous hues of the many countries and dishes represented, and breaks flags down into a simple system.
Meanwhile, “All of the dishes include a description and a photo of the chef who prepared them, in keeping with the company’s mission to ensure that the chefs are being represented, can take pride in their own work and are part of the consumer experience.”
All told, it’s a dose of well-needed nourishment, indeed.
