Our project is a vegetarian and environmentally friendly restaurant plan. Our restaurant offers a wide variety of vegetarian and dessert dishes to our customers. Customers can choose their favorite vegetarian meal. Cutlery can be recycled. Vegetarian customers and children are our restaurant’s customer goals.
We sought to address today’s environmental issues with our restaurant concept. Problems such as excessive waste produced by take-out dining, build-up of single-use plastics, and gas emissions caused by long-distance delivery are all modern obstacles we wanted to outthink and overcome.
Our goals include, but are not limited to, promoting healthy, local eating habits, encouraging environmental thinking in our customers, and showcasing vegan and vegetarian food options in a colorful, exciting way to dispel notions about it being bland or limited. Originally, we wanted our packaging to be reused by customers as planters, but we shifted our focus to creating packaging that can be returned to the restaurant for future orders instead of being kept or thrown out.
Our restaurant plan began with a concept for food packaging that could be reused as pots or planters, so customers could collect them and start their own mini garden. We considered the idea of including seedlings, plant food, and seed packets with orders, however, we ran into issues when it came to addressing customers who would want to return excess items. There was also the question of ensuring that our packaging was safe and suitable for delivering food while still functioning as a planter. Although our original concept changed, this evolved into the Bento Box idea, providing stackable packaging similar to a lunch box, that can be returned and reused when customers made their next order.
In terms of the menu itself, we originally want to promote a mindful eating mentality and focus on the connection between mental health and the food we consume. However, as we carried forward we distanced our restaurant from that idea and went for a more open approach to health eating. Our meals are almost all vegetarian and vegan friendly and our main objective was to give options that were fun and flavorful to combat the idea of these dietary preferences as limiting or bland. To further the idea of vegetarian food being limitless, Stacked would have a rotating specials menu week by week. Originally we considered having all menu items rotate but limited it to one item per menu category instead.
As for the ordering system, Stacked mainly focused on having an app to display both the menu and order items at the same time. Outside of the app we intended to have an online presence as well jumping from a web page to instead a more social media based presence on instagram. Rather than paying for every meal as you order, Stacked uses a credit system where customers create an account and pick between different plans with different credits per month (for example, 100 credits for the month of October). All menu items ranged from 5–10 credits with sides, soups, drinks being worth 5 credits while Entrees ranged more towards 10 credits. When a customer orders, they are using their monthly credits, encouraging them to order more regularly in order to get the most use out of their plan. Our aim for being sustainable and affordable aligned with a restaurants need to have regular, returning customers. Customers could upgrade their plan for more credits per month (meaning being able to purchase more meals) or stay the same depending on their preferences.
Zhuoran’s Approach
As for the logo, the name of our restaurant is stacked, and it is a vegetarian restaurant, so I think we can use some vegetable patterns to make the effect of stacking. My idea is to pile a vegetable face. However, the previous versions seemed too complicated for the logo. After a revision, the logo became the current logo.
When customers open the website, they first log in the account. When they enter the homepage, they can see the information pictures of the restaurant, etc. Enter the menu page for food selection, and then confirm the order and track the order. Initially, the home page only considered pictures of the food, and eventually added pages about the restaurant, such as where the food came from and how to transport it. This increases the usability of the home page. We canceled the price and replaced it with an integral. Customers only need to pay for a month or a quarter to choose a different food menu every day and get points, which can be redeemed for different food.
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As for packaging, I have been struggling with pattern design. I think about using my patterns to create different design directions, such as enlarging patterns or overlaying patterns. However, it neglects to design the packaging from other directions to make the packaging more interesting, such as the slogan or the pattern of the city. Finally I added a city pattern on the package
Rachel’s approach
My entire process began with the logo design. I struggled at first with the logo process, and jumping from sketches to a final design was a difficult task. I knew that I wanted to have a concept that incorporated sliced stacked vegetables, but I wasn’t sure of what direction to go in.
As soon as I started to play around with construction paper textures, the concept came into clear view.
I decided to stick with this construction paper cut-out concept with all of my branding, and illustrate my packaging in the same style. This illustration style came into play in my menu as well. I originally used photos for my menu items, but ultimately went with an illustrated design that allowed for more customization and personality.
While designing my app, I struggled with creating a design that was clean and accessible while still appealing to my illustration theme. I went with more simpler designs for the icons in order to help with readability while still sticking with the color scheme I created.
For the last part of my branding, the instagram page, I combined the cleaner icon style with my illustration style to tie everything together. The highlight icons of my page had a more simple design while the instagram posts featured the same illustrations of my menu.
From start to finish, cohesion and personality was an essential part of my design process and I hope that it showed in the work I created.
Zoe’s Approach
For a long time, my process was mainly focused on the logo design. While I had many different approaches to my logo, I knew I wanted my logo to be typographic, have a vintage feel and that I wanted a palette that was not limited to shades of green as I saw this was a common factor in other vegetarian “green” designs. I was also more or less set on the concept of “containing” the logo in the way that a bento box or stacked items would need to click together and be unified. I tried to express the vintage approach through a mix of typography from found typography in wood block prints and using a mix of san serif and serifs. I also dabbled with different symbols, going from using a bike, a bike wheel, an actual bento box structure, to simple geometric shapes like squares and rectangles. Eventually, I was content with this typographic logo that shows off my branding’s playful approach as well as the leaf icon I would use as my scaled responsive logo image. While having that element of “containing” each letter, my final approach to the logo allowed me and my work more room to breath through the way the logo itself stacked atop itself in a playful manner instead of being squished into one stuck shape.
My web design focused a lot on illustration and color. My older concepts tried to further tie into the muted color palette of my logo by using a muted peach throughout but as it has evolved the app now focuses on a soft sky blue to contrast the earthy tones. While in its earlier stages I tried to incorporate a lot of different shapes and angles for buttons and other components, it made the app hard to navigate and distracting. Instead, I simplified the buttons and limited the type used to only two fonts so that it feels more cohesive while being easier to read. Then, I was able to bring back that more “fun” element I attempted with the different shapes and use them in my illustrations of food items. For each menu item displayed, I made different images and patterns for to represent them and I was able to incorporate more color and organic shapes in ways that worked well together without taking away from the overall design of the app by distracting the user.
When it came to packaging, I had a more straightforward approach based off of my logo. I knew I wanted to have a more illustrative take, but I also wanted to keep that off kilter feeling of how my packaging is displayed as a nod to the different angles I played with for the shapes in my final logo version. As for the design, due to the illustrations I show through my app menu, I wanted to allow customers to be able to see those illustrative patterns in another light, hence, using the same illustrations as packaging design. I intend to use a few of the different patterns I made, however it would not be so that the food you order is necessarily the illustration your stacked delivery has since that would be a difficult process to ensure since we reuse packaging to avoid excess. However, when customers receive their order they would be met with a colorful variety of stacked boxes with different patterns from the Stacked app they ordered from.
The other deliverables I have been working on are a Tshirt for employees as well as available for customer purchase. Here, I wanted my leaf logo to be the focal point as well as giving a chance for the color palette I use to give a user options whether it be ina muted green, warm orange, sky blue, etc. I included using some textured detail from the leaf logo on the sleeve to give a touch of variety instead of sticking to keeping it just on the front side of the shirt. I wanted the design to be able to refer back to my stacked branding as a whole but still be stylish and wearable on its own.
The Stacked Restaurant leaves a lot of questions about what is next. What is the future of sustainability in takeout? Could this business model be adapted by other restaurants in order to reduce waste while providing an easy option for an at-home meal? Stacked could expand throughout Philadelphia to provide this service to any customers in the city, or expand to other major cities in the United States to allow for users across the country to commit to a sustainable lifestyle in their takeout. With more time and resources, we could commit to providing an easy route to sustainability through tips and newsletters. Outside of a pandemic, the Stacked business could offer events to its customers in order to promote a greener lifestyle and connect users to other like-minded individuals.