Quatre Mains package design - beartender, quatre mains, rebranding
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VERPAKKING&LABEL MAGAZINE / BeARtender

From patisserie ingredient to professional cocktail essential

DiraFrost, a Belgian producer of 100% natural frozen fruit used primarily in the bakery and patisserie industry, felt the time was ripe to tap into a new marketing segment for its fruit purées. The product was initially positioned and sold as fruit purée for patisserie and ice-cream producers. However, following a creative brainstorming session regarding this product innovation, the existing product was relaunched as 100% mashed fruit (without any additives), under the brand name of “BeARtender” for the trendy cocktail bar sector. Brand & packaging design agency Quatre Mains engineered this special creative metamorphosis.

‘The original product was launched around five years ago on the food service market, and achieved considerable popularity in the patisserie sector for the preparation and finishing of pastry and ice cream,’ explains Patrick De Grande, Creative and Managing Director of Quatre Mains. ‘The product itself is still based on 100% mashed fruit but is now available without the addition of any sugars. 

The greatest challenge in this make-over was to reposition a relatively simple product as an ingredient for cocktails. 

Therefore, the packaging required a considerable up-scaling in terms of cutting-edge appeal for use in trendy cocktail bars by bar tender professionals. This won’t mean however that chefs and patissiers will no longer be able to find their tried-and-tested fruit purée, being still able to order the product they have come to rely on in a 1 kg tray packaging. However, it is important for the brand owner to be able to focus on the new target group of bartenders with these new, convenient bottles.’

Quatre Mains package design - cocktail, fruit, mashed

Greater potential 

The input for the restyling was provided by the market survey, which clearly revealed greater potential for this product in the cocktail bar market. Patrick De Grande continues: ‘This is why our positioning and rebranding is focusing on this new sector.’ 

Quatre Mains also played an active part in the final briefing for the design.

‘We contributed strongly to this. After all, the client had only limited experience in expanding a brand. We therefore sought advice from a well-known professional bartender, Dave Aertgeerts, to ask him if the product would be acceptable to a bartender in its current form, and if he or she would be likely to buy it at all. The survey took a considerable amount of time to complete, but it showed us that the product, currently sold as 100% natural fruit, has numerous advantages. That makes it very trendy and appealing.’ 

Sales figures

The product was launched in September 2016 and the first sales figures are now available. In Israel, Spain, Greece, Belgium and Germany specialised distributors for the catering industry have started selling the product. All in all, this amounts to 7,400 kg of the product, according to Patrick De Grande.

‘Based on the enthusiastic response on BeARtender’s social media channels, our client can be assured that the new brand is achieving popularity among the international bartending scene.

We have also presented at events in Berlin, London and Athens, and additionally at the Horeca Expo catering industry trade fair in Ghent. Here we discovered that bartenders have been searching for some time for pure fruit in a convenient packaging to be used behind the bar.’

Same bottles

The bottle in itself is essentially the same as in its former life. ‘This is a PP squeeze bottle.’ However, the graphic design has undergone a drastic change. ‘The previous design was “out-dated” and could not be used in this form in its new life. Previously, it was simply called DiraFrost fruit purée — a far cry from BeARtender. In the new positioning, the bottle is provided with a peelable shrink sleeving. The advantage to this is that it can be removed in one simple motion if you do not want to show your audience which brand you are using. Many bartenders prefer to present the product as home-made. Thanks to the solution of a removable sleeve, they create the impression of having mashed and bottled the fresh fruit by themselves. 

To those wishing to work as anonymously as possible, we also provide custom-made labels, personalised or not, that they can affix to the bottle. Of course, this does deter from BeArtender’s brand name recognisability. The opposite applies of course to products such as alcoholic beverages whose survival depends on branding. 

Quatre Mains package design - dirafrost, details, peel off

BeARtender

In reference to the bear in the DiraFrost logo, a bear was placed in the spotlight on pack. The new brand name ultimately chosen was BeARtender, a contraction of ‘bear’ and ‘bartender’. Central to the design and carried by the brand name, a rugged bear is shown with fruit juice dripping from his muzzle. ‘As if this bear has just mashed the fruit in the bottle.’ The new graphic design has consciously been kept simple to emphasise the pureness of the product. The image and text are exclusively in black-and-white, resembling a tattoo, with a view to reinforcing the trendy’ night-life’ feeling. The background is in an attractive colour, which differs according to the flavour and was chosen to represent the fruit in our squeeze bottle.’ Our client’s marketing manager considers the new, rugged-looking bear an excellent vehicle for working out new, appealing content for the brand. This is, of course, very important in our digital era.

Quatre Mains package design - quatre mains, dirafrost, squeeze

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