Wholesome Meats

Overview
Brand Identity
Omnichannel Ecomm Marketing
Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)

Role
Sr. Visual Designer
Nov 2020 - Nov 2021

Links
Acquired by Cream Co. Meats (Oct ‘22)

Wholesome Meats was a San Antonio, TX-based beef brand dedicated to accelerating the consumer adoption of Regenerative Agriculture, which included practices that sequestered carbon and produced the highest quality grass-fed & finished beef for consumers.

As the Visual Designer for parent fund Soilworks, I was challenged with developing a thoughtful brand that would not only generate ecommerce & retail sales, but actually shift consumer perspective to stand up against the rise of meat alternatives.

*Company acquired by Cream Co. Meats in October 2022

Processed to mimic, but not the real thing.

With the rapid popularity of the plant-based meat industry in 2020, there was counter-research emerging about how meat alternatives were ultra-processed and included many unhealthy ingredients. Wholesome Meats was developed in turn to provide consumers with an approachable & tasty beef brand that offered a middle ground between standard cattle production and plant-based meat.

We knew it wouldn’t be easy to go up to bat against a billion-dollar industry ($3B alone invested in 2020!), so I began by conducting market research and surveys to determine the true desires of consumers, while finding a core persona for pricier grass-fed beef. I wasn’t surprised to learn that there were many in the market for a high-quality beef option that worked to bridge the climate-food gap.

Brand benefits comparison

Better beef for a better planet.

The vision for Wholesome Meats became 3-fold: to educate consumers on regenerative beef; to source from small ranchers & uplift their services; and to balance out the beef industry with this first small step. This led me to the design of a logo & guidelines that expressed a friendly yet informative tone to appeal to both D2C and B2B audiences. Shades of grass greens and sky blues paired with kraft backgrounds gave an underlying earthy feel, so customers knew that our messaging was rooted in environment-focused facts.

Alongside the CEO, I helped to develop a 3-year business plan that focused on an ecommerce & retail sales strategy using omnichannel marketing to reach target audiences. I was in charge of our entire digital presence, starting with the design of the whole website using a drag-and-drop site builder, along with a separate buildout of our ecommerce platform through Shopify. In working with the Marketing Director, I simultaneously created our email marketing program through Klaviyo, while designing various digital assets for paid ads, influencer marketing support, and online media placements.

The immediate growth of our D2C business opened up the doors for a focus on retail as well. Efforts to do so included customer-tested packaging, grocer and restaurant collateral, direct mail, and best-in-class presentation decks for executive sales meetings. This helped us land products in major retail chain HEB, numerous foodservice distributors, and multiple restaurants and grocers throughout the state of Texas and beyond.

Customer approved packaging A, Photoshoot production

Customer approved packaging B, Photoshoot production