Chenika

Chenika is a fast-casual Kitchen offering premium quality authentic fried chicken prepared using the highest quality ingredients. Before launching in 2020, it engaged Roo Studio for branding. Chenika aimed to establish a family business with a powerful and refreshing identity; a brand capable of expanding that would last and become a household name for generations to come.

As with most of our startup clients, Chenika needed Roo Studio to think alongside the business development team to not only create an identity but also help shape business strategies. And, similar to most of our startup clients, Chenika also had limitations but a vision for its brand to succeed and grow despite these. Therefore, it was our task to create time-sensitive and attainable goals that would systematically allow the brand to eventually reach its vision.

CH LIKE CHENIKA

We began our work by devising the brand strategy and selecting a name for Chenika. After multiple sessions of gathering information and brainstorming, Chenika was selected from the options that had been shortlisted.

Chenika means baby rooster in the Mazani dialect, a language spoken in the Mazandaran province of Northern Iran.

In addition to its meaning, Chenika was selected for how it sounds. Fried chicken owes much of its popularity to its texture and crunch.

For us, the sound “ch” was reminiscent of everything crispy and crunchy, like chips or crisps. By naming the brand Chenika, we would subconsciously remind our audience of the delightful experience of biting into Chenika’s fried chicken, the sound, and the texture, amplifying the brand experience with our naming strategy and in turn making the brand more memorable.

If you can understand your audience, you are sure to win their hearts. We dedicated weeks to gathering insight into our audience and the fast food market in Iran.

We ordered fried chicken from every fast food chain we could think of. The food was kept and studied over time, while the packaging and the brand experience were discussed amongst our strategy and creative teams.

At the same time, we examined who orders fried chicken and why. We concluded that the majority of our audience is ordering fried chicken in a social setting, such as a friendly gathering or a party. The convenience of having food pre-cut into individual portions makes it a staple for events where you need something to munch on while standing up, mingling, or having fun.

By examining our competitors, we realized that a vast opportunity was missed. Most of the existing packaging did not look aesthetically pleasing. Therefore, the food could not be served directly in its original packaging to guests. At the same time, the poor quality of the packaging and the way that the food was wrapped or not wrapped, caused the packaging to be soaked with oil stains and diminished the quality of the chicken. The overall experience was not pleasant enough to invite guests to enjoy. We looked at the soggy chicken, the oil-stained kraft paper that was unhygienically used for packaging, and the unexciting boxes with a residue of an unpleasant smell of chicken, and were inspired to give our audience something they truly deserved, something exciting, fresh, and presentable.

Based on our insight into the audience and their habits, we decided to focus our efforts on packaging to create word of mouth instead of investing our budget on ATL or out-of-home advertising. Our strategy was to directly give back to our customers.

With a controlled budget, we wanted to avoid spreading ourselves too thin. Instead, we would focus on creating a powerful name and increasing brand equity by delivering top-notch quality and a unique brand experience all around, to create brand ambassadors who would willingly talk about us and spread the word.

A strong brand personality is essential to a fast food restaurant’s success. Since Chenika was mainly a single-product brand, it not only needed a great persona but also a powerful story for its continued success.

Based on key insights, we built Chenika’s personality as a young guy, who is hip and highly educated. He is bilingual and travels a lot, is personable and social, and has friends from all walks of life. Chenika’s personality formed the basis of our brand identity: friendly, sophisticated yet fun, simple yet trendy, unique and yet personable.

We also designed over 40 characters for Chenika’s family and friends to be leveraged in our activities. Every character was developed and named based on a personality type that our audience could connect with and assigned a purpose in the brand story. These will be used as the brand grows and needs more elements to connect through storytelling.

The logo was designed based on the brand personality of Chenika, inspired by a simple drawing of a rooster and made using a few geometric shapes. It conveys a friendly, lovable character, while the simplicity of geometric shapes allows enough room for creativity in how it is employed.

Contrary to popular belief, fried chicken is most often made using baby roosters. By showcasing a rooster’s rich colors instead of a chicken, we would be breaking stereotypes and doing something fresh by simply illustrating the reality. The logo was therefore designed using bold, contrasting colors inspired by the colors of a rooster. These colors also inspired our main color palette.

Despite being a fast food restaurant, Chenika is a premium brand that values high quality in all aspects of its business and wants to attract an audience that cares about quality and freshness.

The positioning of the brand required a logotype that is simple, hip, and playful in a minimalistic manner. The logotype had to reflect Chenika’s personality: charming, friendly, and tasteful. The final logotype is bold enough to make a statement yet slender enough to convey the stylish and premium nature of the brand.

We also developed a complete typeface both in Farsi and English.

Having created the primary color palette, we defined a diverse secondary palette to be used throughout our branding. Although fried chicken is Chenika’s primary product, it also has a range of side dishes, sandwiches, a kids’ meal, and special sauces, the packaging for which could be designed using this diverse secondary color palette harmoniously.

We further created patterns for the brand that could be used as needed for instance in the restaurant design.

Driven by respect for our clients, we wanted to be able to design packaging that conveys the right sensations while ensuring that the food is delivered just as it looks, smells, and tastes at the restaurant. The food had to be packaged efficiently in a visually pleasing manner so that it can be easily served directly in its original packaging to friends and family. The right sensations entail that the food is of premium quality, freshly prepared with care, hygienic, and delivers a world of new, exceptional experiences.  

The simple geometric shape of the logo and the solid colors of the color palette inspired the packaging. We developed a variety of packages, also in different shapes, using minimal design and solid colors. This added another layer of excitement to receiving a delivery from Chenika since our audience would be intrigued to find out what color and box the food would be delivered in. This would further help generate buzz and word of mouth amongst customers, eventually contributing to them becoming brand ambassadors.

We designed Goofi Box for the kids’ meal using a distinct design from the rest of the boxes. Children connect better with illustrated images, so we designed a colorful illustrated box, accompanied by a notebook featuring images that the children could customize using a sticker pack starring Chenika’s family.

Besides aesthetics, we valued function. We used medical-grade, food-safe cardboard and paper for the packaging. The chicken was wrapped in a special paper and sealed with our designed stickers, and only then placed in boxes without touching the box at all, to ensure that it retains its texture and quality until it is delivered.

The paper menu was designed using elements within the design system and employed the character of Chefi, the chef from our family of characters. Several other menus including a menu board for the restaurant were similarly designed.

We also named some of the original food that Chenika had developed based on unique formulations. These included sauces such as Redrub, Chenika’s unique red sauce, Elzymust, Chenika’s yogurt-based sauce as well as the Sokharist Sandwich, a play on the word Sokhari meaning fried in Farsi.

We developed a unique identity and logotype for Redrub, strategically designed to diverge from Chenika’s visual identity, in case Chenika ever wants to market it as an independent brand through retailers. 

Several additional items, such as employees’ uniforms and aprons, stationery, items for decoration and events, delivery bikes, and other assets were also designed.

We also carried out photography, created visual assets for the brand’s social media platforms, and have since been running Chenika’s Instagram, handling all its visual and copywriting needs.

Roo Arch also designed Chenika’s restaurant, implementing all health regulations and building its kitchen, while also bringing the brand experience to life.

A mere two years after opening, Chenika has attracted its desired audience, generated word of mouth, and garnered a reputation on social media and offline. Oftentimes, it is referred to as the brand with beautiful packaging and branding, which is always pleasant for Roo Studio to hear. Through close collaboration with Chenika, we continue to develop the brand to reach its vision.  

Several assets developed originally are yet to be released including delivery bikes as well as games and additional packaging. Our efforts are continuously based on our original plan: delivering an exceptional experience and more to the audience, which is what they deserve. Our vision for Chenika is to deliver an unparalleled experience in the fast food industry amplifying its brand equity and generating loyalty.