We've had the pleasure of becoming pasta experts over the past year as we've worked with American Italian Pasta Company on the refresh of their regional pasta brands. The Mueller's brand has over 145 years of history with consumers in the Northeast United States. AIPC came to PKG to bring the brand along with modern audiences while retaining it's classic American heritage. We developed many concepts to see how far consumers would let us take this brand, and in the end we found a way to modernize while maintaining it's classic equity.
The pasta aisle is historically a visually chaotic space within the grocery store, with national brands, regional brands and store brands all competing for consumer eyes. Understanding that consumer's shop their trusted brands by looking for specific cuts, we set out to create a new system to aid shopability.
With "short cuts" like elbows and penne, we heard frequently from consumers that they want a large window to identify the pasta shapes. This provided an added challenge for "long cuts" like spaghetti and angel hair. How can you develop a quick visual cue to tell them apart when it's not readily apparent in the window? Photography of course!
We heard through qualitative and quantitative testing that consumers were drawn to the new aspirational ingredient images as a way to tell apart their favorite cuts of pasta AND suggest a usage. Keep an eye out on grocery store shelves from Michigan to Florida as new packaging for Mueller's begins to rollout.
