Branding Barriofied

Challenge

Independent restaurant owners are losing a major competitive advantage when they don't have the team & budget to leverage technology the way big chains and franchises do. So they're left at the mercy of high commission fees from third-party online ordering apps.

Solution

Barriofied (for the end user, aka customer) or Barriofy (for the business owner, aka client) is proposing to offer direct online ordering where food & drink owners have the agency and flexibility to decide how much they want to pay in commission fees (starting at 10% versus their current 25%+).

The direct benefit is that a percent of those online sales at their selected commission rate is then used to run online ads through the Meta platform. A higher commission means a higher budget for the owner to run their own automated marketing campaigns to be switched on to fill slow hours of foot traffic.

Now, restaurant owners acquire and retain their customers' data to retarget them in future campaigns in lieu of sending traffic to third-party apps, only to be resold to their past customers who already know and love their food but keep paying extortive fees.

The Name

The word comes from colloquial Spanish, which means "neighborhood" or succinctly "hood," and is the antithesis of gentrification. In that, local business owners are no longer coerced into blindly signing whatever Silicon Valley tech dictates they will pay if they are to have a meaningful online presence. Also, because the majority of initial clients are of Hispanic descent, they have a constant uphill battle navigating an online English presence. With Barriofied, not only do they have access to robust technology, but they have also acquired a trusted marketing and consulting arm to better build their online brand equity.

The decision to make the wordmark a slab blackletter font is reminiscent of the American Southwest graffiti scene in Hispanic neighborhoods (barrios) that is the Chicano (Mexican American) aesthetic.

A break from my typical branding work is to embrace the imperfections in the wordmark that echo the chaotic nature of running a family-owned business without any formal training or education, which doesn't deter ambitious small-business owners.