The Brief
Alpaca Peruvian Chicken did not come to MRC with a broken brand. They came with a beloved one that had outgrown itself. Across locations, different generations of the logo had taken root. Signage varied from store to store. The mark itself had legibility issues, and the yellow and green palette, iconic as it was, had real ADA contrast problems that no one had formally addressed. Promotional materials were inconsistent across the portfolio. The brand was not falling apart, but it was not holding together either, and with a licensee model pushing toward 50 locations, that gap was about to become much more expensive.
When they came to us, they thought they needed social assets and campaigns. We saw that the foundation had to come first. Tighten the brand, establish clear guardrails for what to do and what not to do, and then the campaigns would actually have something to stand on. You cannot market your way out of an inconsistent brand identity. You just spend more money making the inconsistency more visible.
The Work
The challenge with a licensee model is not just consistency. It is control without friction. A licensee operator is not waiting for a designer to approve every asset. They are running a restaurant. They need a brand system that makes the right decision the easy decision, at every touchpoint, without a call to corporate every time a sign needs to go up.
That meant more than a logo refresh. We did a full placemaking audit across the store environment, identifying where the logo actually needed to appear, what could be evergreen and stay up through any campaign, and what was worth the cost of swapping out seasonally. The result was a clear asset hierarchy that saved money and created cleaner, more intentional spaces.
The website was rebuilt alongside the brand, giving Alpaca a digital presence that matched the new identity and worked as hard as the physical locations. As the brand grows, we continue to maintain and evolve the site alongside everything else.
The bigger shift was operational. Alpaca now has a brand portal where general managers pull directly from a library of corporate approved assets. Nobody is guessing. Nobody is pulling an old file off a hard drive or screenshotting something off Instagram. As they build toward their 20th location this year, every new store opens with the same brand as the flagship.
Still In It
We are still in it with them. Today, that looks like helping shape operational strategy that gives incoming store managers a clear playbook from day one. We built out templated assets for the things managers handle themselves, business cards, email signatures, the everyday stuff, so they are not waiting on a designer for every small request. On the brand side, we continue to support sports partnership creative for the Carolina Hurricanes and Durham Bulls, app promotions, and design strategy as the brand grows.
"Since working with them on our rebrand and new website, we've seen increased sales, customer engagement, and brand recognition. As much stuff as we throw at them, they always deliver."
