Cabrales Coffee

Background Cabrales is an Argentine company founded by Don Antonio Cabrales Vega over 70 years ago, and today it is still run by the third generation of the family. As a company and as a family, they have a strong commitment: to maintain the quality of their products at the highest level. They dedicate their knowledge, effort, and technological innovation to this, always seeking to satisfy the needs of their consumers and their own passion: to give their name to the best coffee. With this mandate, Cabrales contacted Grupo Berro for us to review the branding and design of all the company's products. The Challenge To ensure that the quality of the products is reflected in the new designs and that the name stands out at the point of sale. During the initial strategy stage, which we developed alongside Fernando Zerboni, we visited the factory in Mar del Plata and learned the differences between roasted and toasted coffees, between ground and whole bean coffees, or between bagged coffee, instant coffee, and capsules. We literally immersed ourselves in the world of coffee. We grouped all the brand's packaging, which includes over 50 products, and met with the client to understand the 'splash of color' they referred to. In our analysis, we found that out of the huge family of products, only 4 were the 'drivers' pushing the rest of the line, and clearly, we needed to focus on capturing the DNA of each of them. The conclusion we reached was that the design strategy and brand architecture would be based on updating and extending the identity of the two best-selling and most recognized products in the market: Súper Cabrales and La Planta de Café. It was decided to organize the product portfolio under two types of coffee: Cabrales for roasted coffees and La Planta de Café for toasted coffees. The Result First, we redesigned the identity. Very carefully, we modified details of the 'cup' symbol, keeping the characteristic base plate but modernizing the style of the cup with a more streamlined silhouette and also adjusting the smoke, creating a more relaxed movement that emphasizes the idea of 'enjoying the moment of a good coffee.' In the case of the logo, we respected the slant of the typography but redrew it, adjusting details of shapes and spacing between letters for clearer reading. For the packaging design, Cabrales' new branding was structured around updating the design of the roasted coffee Súper Cabrales. Once the details of this flagship product were refined, we defined an architecture for the entire line, emphasizing the application of the brand diagonally, the presentation of the cup symbol within a 'red tie,' and other attributes that the previous packs had. Based on this architecture, we designed all the products respecting that general concept while highlighting the personality of each type of coffee. Beyond the defined bases for the products, each line must be analyzed with its particularities. In the case of the compatible Nespresso capsules, which have a thin and elongated packaging, it was surprising how little visibility the Cabrales logo had; the brand was lost in the packaging. The design decision was to highlight the name, which is a mark of quality, and we moved from a tiny application on the front of the pack to a prominent display to ensure the reading in the gondola is compelling. Today, the brand and its product line are presented with a strong and more consistent identity, highlighting the value of the name 'Cabrales,' which is synonymous with good coffee, and respecting the colorful 'splash of color' that the client did not want to lose.