As CHEF’STORE prepared for divestiture from US Foods, the business was entering a period where it needed to define its brand more intentionally and independently.

Over time, CHEF’STORE had evolved beyond some of the legacy assumptions and positioning inherited from US Foods, but its brand standards had not evolved at the same pace. The existing guidance did not fully reflect the customer experience, personality or visual expression the business had developed through its stores, marketing and communications.

CHEF’STORE needed a brand framework that captured who the business had become, rather than continuing to rely on definitions established for it by its parent company.

The guidelines needed to:

• Establish a clearer, more independent CHEF’STORE brand identity

• Bring brand standards in line with how the business had evolved

• Define a consistent visual and verbal expression across channels

• Give internal teams and external partners a shared creative reference

• Reduce ambiguity and subjective interpretation of the brand

• Connect campaigns, store environments and communications to one recognizable identity

• Create a foundation capable of supporting the brand beyond divestiture

I developed the brand guidelines as a working system for internal teams and external partners, translating existing brand elements into clearer standards for consistent execution.

My responsibilities included:

• Defining the overall structure and purpose of the brand guidelines

• Establishing standards for logo usage, color, typography, imagery, iconography and supporting graphic elements

• Clarifying how CHEF’STORE’s visual identity should translate across different formats and channels

• Connecting the guidelines to the broader brand strategy and emerging archetype work

• Defining principles that balanced consistency with enough flexibility for campaign development

• Creating examples that demonstrated how individual brand elements should work together

• Building a resource that could guide internal creative teams, agencies and vendor partners

• Applying the standards to ongoing campaign, digital, social, in-store and environmental work

Build a System, Not a Rulebook

The goal was not to create a restrictive set of design rules. I built the guidelines around recognizable principles that could help teams make better creative decisions while still leaving room for different audiences, campaigns and environments.

Define the Brand Beyond the Logo

Consistency required more than establishing proper logo usage. The guidelines brought color, typography, imagery, iconography, layout and messaging together so CHEF’STORE could develop a recognizable overall expression across very different applications.

Create for Real-World Use

The framework needed to work across everything from social and digital advertising to in-store signage and large-format environmental creative. Standards were developed with actual applications in mind rather than treating the guidelines as a theoretical brand document.

Connect Strategy and Creative Expression

The guidelines became part of a broader brand foundation that also included audience understanding, customer value proposition and brand archetype. Creative decisions could therefore be connected back to who CHEF’STORE serves, what the brand promises and how it should make customers feel.

Balance Consistency With Flexibility

CHEF’STORE communicates with professional foodservice operators and everyday shoppers across a wide range of channels. The system needed enough structure to protect brand recognition without forcing every execution to look identical.

Brand Impact

The work helped move CHEF’STORE toward a more recognizable and cohesive expression by defining how individual visual and verbal elements should work together rather than being interpreted independently from project to project.

Organizational Impact

Internal teams, agencies and partners gained a common reference point for creative development, helping create clearer expectations and more consistent decision-making around brand expression.

Creative Impact

The guidelines provided a foundation that could support integrated campaigns, social content, digital advertising, in-store communications and environmental creative without requiring the brand to be reinvented for each new initiative.

Because the work established organizational infrastructure rather than functioning as a traditional marketing campaign, its results are best demonstrated through consistency, scalability and adoption.

• Established a comprehensive set of standards for CHEF’STORE’s visual and creative expression

• Created a shared reference for internal teams, agencies and production partners

• Brought previously separate brand elements into one cohesive system

• Provided clearer parameters for campaign and channel-specific creative development

• Helped reduce subjective interpretation of the brand across projects

• Created a scalable foundation for future campaign, environmental and digital work

• Provided the creative standards that could be paired with CHEF’STORE’s broader brand archetype and strategic foundation