Abundance
Project Overview
Abundance is a locally owned and operated “American Fare” restaurant in Ephraim, UT that was seeking new ownership to keep the business alive. The new owner was interested in improving the customer experience and modernizing the brand at Abundance to attract more customers. We had to find a way to revitalize the business, while keeping the cost as minimal as possible.
My team was in competition with others at our University to redesign the customer experience across digital and physical touchpoints for Abundance. We had one month to design a new logo, website, menu, and any other materials necessary for the business and gather our ideas into a pitch deck. At the end of the month, we would present our pitch deck and the winner would be decided.
Role: Team Leader
Team: Myself and 3 other students
Timeline: 1 month
The Challenge
Abundance was working with extremely outdated materials, their website hadn’t been updated in many years and the only way customers could interact with the restaurant effectively was through facebook. They didn’t have a way to receive or process online orders and the original owners of Abundance never established a cohesive brand, so the storefront looked confusing and uninviting. These experience gaps were killing the business, and the new owner needed it turned around fast.
Understanding the Users
Locals:
Ephraim has a population of 6,200 people.
Many families have lived in Ephraim for several generations, creating a strong sense of community amongst the residents.
Ephraim’s biggest event is the Scandinavian Heritage festival that they host every Spring.
A majority of the communities shops are located on Main Street — including Abundance.
The community often hosts events in Pioneer Park which is immediately next door to Abundance.
Students:
Age: 18-24
Snow college had roughly 5,500 students enrolled at the time of this project, with a majority of those students attending the Ephraim campus.
Students can live in on-campus residencies or they can opt to live off-campus in Ephraim.
Snow College offers courses in Fall, Spring, and Summer semesters. However, many students opt not to take Summer courses and live away from campus for the summer months.
Design Goals
When discussing design goals with the new owner, she had envisioned making Abundance a gathering place for the community. Her dream was for Abundance to enhance the community and increase Ephraim pride. Her goals were not to alter the menu dramatically, but elevate the atmosphere in Abundance. She wanted the new Abundance to be inspired by farmers markets, and have a “home grown” feel to it while also feeling fresh and modern. She wanted Abundance to feel like a coffee shop and a “farm-to-table” restaurant had a casual-dining child.
Visual Identity
Building the visual identity to meet the goals of the client was tricky. We had to be very intentional to balance our choices between both rustic and modern (two seemingly opposite tones). Our team chose earth tones for our color palette, and a rustic typeface for the main logotype. We felt these effectively established the “home-grown” and welcoming tones desired by the client. To establish the contemporary feel, we chose a modern secondary typeface and made the logomark with clean lines.
The logomark is a Sego Lily, the Utah state flower. It symbolizes the local pride that Ephraim takes part in.
Storefront Experience
To effectively improve the in-person customer experience of Abundance, we knew we would have to address many different facets of the business. To curate the atmosphere effectively we looked at what customers would be interfacing with the most. We narrowed our focus down to signage, uniforms, menu, and food serviceware.
Website
One of the most essential parts of this project was redesigning the Abundance website. In order to reach younger customers, specifically the Snow College students, we knew we needed to add online ordering to the Abundance website. We also added a “Community” page to the website to serve as a virtual bulletin board to broadcast events happening in Ephraim/at Abundance. Additionally, we also implemented a newsletter for Abundance to further communicate community events and promote seasonal menu items.
Conclusion
When it came time for the new owner to pick a winner out of the groups who pitched their designs, she decided to pick multiple teams as winners — including ours. She mentioned specifically how she thought our designs really embodied the essence of community, just as she had dreamed.
This experience made me value being able to design with motivated team members because we were able to problem solve as a group to achieve the best results. I felt grateful for the opportunity to lead the team through these creative processes and I felt as we worked together, we shared a vision for what Abundance could be. I am incredibly proud of the work we produced as a team and I feel lucky to have worked with individuals who were passionate about the project. In my future work, I hope to continue to design with a team around me as I feel it results in stronger designs.