Vic's
Round

Vic's
A new cut for the chef’s butcher
In 2020, Vic’s Meat, a wholesale butcher that supplies restaurants across Australia, was a success by any measure of the word.
They provided almost all of Australia’s top 100 restaurants with premium-quality meat, with an annual turnover in the tens of millions of dollars.
Then COVID hit.
Suddenly, the business confronted an abrupt and urgent need to evolve. The companies they relied on were no longer trading – and their product inventory had a very real expiry date.
A hasty pivot
Faced with these challenging circumstances, the company rapidly launched Vic’s Meat Direct, a direct-to-consumer online butcher. Fortunately, this pivot was successful, it also raised a host of questions about the future state of the business once regular trade resumed.
Against this backdrop, Vic’s Meat founder Anthony Puharich engaged us to reimagine their strategy for a new era. This set the stage for a transformation that would include expanding their customer base to both businesses-to-business and general consumers, as well as creating a signature retail experience with their own stores.
The chef’s butcher
From the outset, we knew Vic Meat’s quality, heritage and credibility in the hospitality industry were incredible assets we could leverage.
We recognised the business’ core ambition to bring people together through shared food experiences and their deeply held passion for the craft of butchery. This thinking, in turn, led us to our positioning as ‘the chef’s butcher’.
This articulation encapsulated the brand powerfully and succinctly, conveying both the heritage and the quality of the offering. By alluding to the brand’s pedigree among hospitality businesses, we created a sense of ‘in-the-know’ credibility among the public.
We also dropped the ‘Meat’ from the name, opting for ‘Vic’s’ as a standalone – a memorable personification of the brand. This change also future-proofed the business, so they were free to create new offerings and experiences under the Vic’s moniker.
A new look…
Now that we were on a first-name basis, we needed a suitably refreshed identity. We approached this through a framework of evolution – retaining some of the brand’s key visual elements (the ‘V’, heart and crown) while updating them for a new audience.
With these changes in place, we began bringing the new brand to life across many touchpoints. Most notably, Vic’s business was evolving to include owned-and-operated stores.
...For a new experience
To lay the groundwork for this expansion, we created a robust experience philosophy to define and articulate the experiential dimensions of Vic’s retail brand.
By framing key pillars in the retail space, we shaped an approach that ensured we considered the Vic’s brand through the lenses of service, environment, product and communications. The resulting document articulated everything from the role the traditional butcher’s block would play in the spaces, to how we spoke about product provenance.
We also brought Platform by Design Office into the conversation as collaborative partners who were ultimately appointed to shape the physical retail spaces based on the concepts expressed within our experience philosophy.
Ensuring coherent and consistent brand experience in Vic’s stores was essential to ensure consumers could experience the level of care and passion the team hold for the craft of butchery.
Making it a reality
This strategic approach came to fruition with Vic’s first store in Sydney’s Chatswood Chase (with more to follow).
We created a considered range of touchpoints for the store. First, we looked at signage typologies – which ranged from functional wayfinding and promotional applications, through to opportunities for brand storytelling presented through the voice of both ‘the butcher’ (informative and educational information about our products) and ‘the chef’ (inspiration and ideas for preparing our products).
Then, we considered the product hierarchy to clarify and design our approach to packaging. Alongside the premium meat the brand was known for, Vic’s also offers a suite of signature products, smallgoods and DIY meal kits – all of which required various levels of design thinking.
Our packaging approach was informed by the various contexts in which they would ultimately reside. Some products, like Vic’s famous cheeseburger spring rolls, would be stocked both within their stores as well as other retailers. We treated these signature products as brand emissaries, conscious that they could create pathways into Vic’s for new consumers who discovered them outside of our owned-and-operated retail environment.
Ultimately, the launch of the first Vic’s retail store represented the culmination of the business transformation we were appointed to help guide. It marks a new era of omnichannel retail for Vic’s – one that’s simultaneously respectful of heritage yet future-focussed, that celebrates craft while also embracing the conventions of a modern brand.
Katherine Lu, photography
Mark Lobo, photography
Ryo Kaneyasu, illustration













