N O TA B L E
MBD’s Retailer Spotlight:
by Maria Dubuc For the last few years, MBD has partnered with Sprouts Farmers Market to refresh various product categories across their retail brand. One of our newest design launches is a line that MBD is particularly proud of and excited to celebrate: Sprouts Mexican Global Cuisine! The Mexican Global Cuisine line is among the first fully integrated global line for Sprouts Own Brands. The product offerings span across four categories and 17 SKUs, which includes taquera sauces, enchilada sauces, fire roasted salsas, and refried beans. Since these Mexican items are the first of many to come groundbreaking Global Cuisine offerings, MBD wanted to set the stage with a spectacular design that would not only sell well but would introduce shoppers to a new culturally-vibrant world at Sprouts. Though we were thrilled to work on such a robust program, we were also aware of the biggest challenge: How do you tastefully and thoughtfully design an authentic line in a space where genuine products can look cheap or worse, culturally insensitive?
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GLOBAL RETAIL BRANDS / MARCH 2022
Since these products are all authentically made with Mexican ingredients, MBD first focused our design development on finding some associations US people have with Mexico. What are the cultural nods that convey Mexican authenticity that are widely understood? We settled on using the “papel picado” as our main feature. “Papel picado” literally means ‘punched’ or ‘perforated’ paper. The traditional cut paper folk art is found throughout Mexico and has become a symbol of Mexican tradition. This motif felt appropriate for these products because they’re items that you would find at the same places where you’d see the papel picado: on the streets or in the home.
We created a chili peppers icon to indicate heat level as this was an important feature of the Global Mexican Cuisine and one that we found to be relevant to many Mexican food products as spice level is very key when shopping for each item. The final, and arguably the most important, aspect of this line is that each product was uniquely shot and styled so that we could ensure the traditional recipes were reflected and illustrated for customers in search of an authentic, fresh product. Actual product can sometimes be tricky to photograph because the quality is compromised but not these authentic Mexican items – they show real authentic flavor!
