Mac & Cheese Street Food

The Mac Factory

Our capabilities

Brand Strategy / Identity Design / Digital Activation / Print Activation

16m+

Views on viral food insider video, 134K shares and 65k comments and going.

5

New sites over two years

Brief

Create a retail-ready fast food chain brand for The Mac Factory to help them build brand awareness, sales and credibility for investment and growth.

Results

Since rebranding The Mac Factory has received huge viral success and high praise from the likes of TimeOut and Buzzfeed. From humble beginnings as a single street-food stall they have seen significant expansion to several permanent franchises as well as launching a range of ready-meals available in UK supermarkets. Sites include Camden Market, Oxford Street Debenhams, Luton Airport, Winter Wonderland, Oxford Westgate and Putney High Street.

Reinventing an icon

The Challenge

The Mac Factory had been a set fixture on the London street food scene for several years but their culinary expertise and the mindblowing taste of their Mac and Cheese creations were not reflected by their brand which felt temporary and amateur.

Chef and founder Graham approached us to help create a stand-out, gourmet street-food brand to get Londoners embracing the ultimate comfort food.

Mac and Cheese, an All-American classic, was unfortunately leaving a bitter taste in the mouths of the British public thanks to decades of school dinners and the prevalence of artificially-flavoured instant sachets on supermarket shelves.

Seriously Mac & Cheese

Our proposition for the brand ‘Seriously Mac & Cheese’ established The Mac Factory as ‘the’ authority on Mac and Cheese in the UK.

We built upon the existing asset of Lady Liberty and brought a fresh, contemporary attitude to the factory-signage-inspired Americana.

KISS Solution

We wanted to reawaken the nation’s appetite for Mac and Cheese by making it fresh-to-order with the best ingredients and mouth-watering flavour combinations.

The Mac Factory wanted to elevate themselves from street food stall to fast food franchise and clearly demonstrate their gourmet take on nostalgic comfort food to entice passing customers.

So we created an iconic red pot that took insta by storm.

We art directed and worked with photographer Lucy Richards to shoot the Mac pots. The brief was to capture the indulgent filling nature of the food, making it irresistible to customers looking at the menus.

While the confident graphics and neon colours break through the noise of crowded food-markets and form a vibrant backdrop for customers to share their food on social media.

The rebrand was such a success we had the opportunity to bring the brand to life across the franchise’ various outlets, from shopping mall kiosks to the Winter Wonderland pop up. Our work covered internal graphics, menus, packaging, signage, website and social.

Thanks to the Bradbury brothers for being a brilliant team and for Mac and Cheese like no other. Oh… that lobster!

Graham Bradbury, Founder, The Mac Factory

“We just wanted to say thanks so much to Matt and Poonam for all your guys’ help, never worked with any company that goes so beyond what would be expected. You guys are doing great things and so happy with the outcome of the branding.”