URBAN eat, the £100m+ food to go brand, is set to build on its ‘cult’ status amongst university students when it hits the shelves next month with a stylish new look and exciting range of innovative products inspired by the emergence of Street Food in the UK.
Having gone from strength to strength since its launch in 2010, URBAN eat is now set to make a move into the mainstream and in order to ensure that the evolution of the brand is a success it has been grounded in the needs of the contemporary ‘food to go’ consumer.
URBAN eat’s Head of Marketing John Want explains: “In addition to producing good quality food that looks and tastes great, we have done a lot of work across our digital marketing platforms in the past few years to appeal to the student audience with promotions such as ‘Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat’ helping us grow our Facebook following to over 40,000 and we now have a fantastic opportunity to take that to a whole new level.
“We have invested a significant amount of time and money in consumer research to help us understand exactly which elements of the existing URBAN eat brand resonate with consumers and where we have opportunity to evolve the brand to appeal to an even wider audience.
“First and foremost it will always be about the food – we know that our target consumer is looking for convenient, tasty and inspirational food experiences influenced by key trends such as Street Food and that is reflected in our NPD activity with products such as the Sweet Potato Falafel, Chimichurri topped Humous & Tabouleh Flatbread Salad.”
The evolution of the brand is also apparent in the new look packaging which features stylish graphics created by hand by URBAN eat’s artist in residence Sue George using traditional potato printing.
“We have of course kept our iconic city skyline and art cues however we have dialled back on the ‘Urban edge’ and what initially started out as Sue experimenting in her studio has created a range of packaging that is totally unique in our marketplace and really captures the essence of the URBAN eat brand.
At the same time as upping its food offering and creative, URBAN eat has also taken the opportunity to redefine its tiering to create four clear offerings; ‘Posh Nosh’ (premium), Legends (Top 10 ‘must stocks’), Core and No Fuss (simple but good) to make it easier for retailers to manage stock and availability.