As you may have noticed, ReGrained has a brand new logo.
We are here to power new categories of upcycled superfoods. We are more than a bar company, packaged foods innovator, and novel ingredient. We are a movement to do good for a world that needs us now more than ever. With your help, we can conserve Earth’s limited resources in brilliant and delicious new ways.
Every movement needs a symbol, and ours is ReGrained’s new R-inside trademark:
Get to know this mark well! When you purchase any product labeled with it, you are helping to better align the food you eat with the planet you love. You’ll see it first on our new packaging, which will debut soon.
ReGrained has grown up a lot as a business since our homebrewing days in college. This new logo is meant to convey the power of edible upcycling. It signals to the consumer that a product is powered by ReGrained.
It occurred to us that, although logos are the defining visual identity for a brand, companies very rarely offer insight into their development. We’d like to break that mold and share a bit about how we got here.
Rewind 7 years…
Our first logo was developed as a favor by Bryan Miller, a friend of Dan and Jordan (ReGrained’s co-founders) at UCLA. We call him out by name because these types of talented, supportive friends are the unsung heroes of many fledgling companies.
The year was 2011, and Dan was baking spent grain bread under the moniker “Brewin’ Bread” (inspired by the UCLA Bruin mascot).
Once Jordan and Dan teamed up though, they realized they were onto something more meaningful than artisanal bread. They rallied around the vision of ReGrained as a platform, a force that could connect the dots between the brewing and food industries.
With the help of Bryan, the bottle cap barley logo was born:
First ReGrained Logo, 2012
This identity conveyed our connection to beer while suggesting a gear in motion, powering our shared vision for a more circular food system. We loved this logo, and it served us well. Good thing too, because in the early days, we spent many nights and weekends staring at it while hand-stickering labels onto hand-sealed packages….
Jump to 2014…
Our next brand refresh was inspired by operational circumstances. Our earliest bars were quite crumbly (we now joke that back then we tasted like a good idea) and difficult to slip into the pre-formed packages. So, we made a cardstock label that doubled as a makeshift funnel during the packing process.
Still bootstrapping, we enlisted another generous and talented friend, Arian Behzadi, to help design the updated logo. Our goal was to feature the bottle cap logo for continuity but upgrade the look to be cleaner. We also introduced the “Eat Beer” tagline on front of pack, which had been working well at farmers markets and events.
New ReGrained Logo, 2014
The next opportunity rose in order to adapt to a new recipe and production process that used automated packaging equipment. We no longer needed to funnel the bars into pre-formed wrappers, but we still couldn’t afford printed wrappers, so we went back to a hand applied compostable sticker.
By 2016 we finally had the cash flow make the switch to printed films. This cut out an enormously tedious part of our process. We again, kept the same basic design, but adapted it to a vertical orientation to better stand out on the shelf:
One more iteration from here in late 2017 would get us to what you are familiar with today. We learned that “Eat Beer” made for a catchy tagline, but ultimately confused our customers on-shelf. Did our product contain beer or alcohol? Did it taste like beer? Was it healthy?
Again, we kept the same general brand vibe, but restructured our hierarchy of messaging. Our goal was to elevate our hero ingredient by highlighting its nutritional and environmental value. SuperGrain+® was born:
With this in market now for about a year, we’ve now learned even more. We’re about to launch our second product line, a savory snack. We also have several other partner brands developing their own Powered by ReGrained lines. This seal will help us pull through a common identity across categories.
We can’t wait to debut what we’ve been working on soon. Stay tuned!
