TASTE PROJECT

TASTE COMMUNITY RESTAURANT 2024 LOCATION LAUNCH

Background

The University of Texas at Arlington’s Public Relations Campaigns course partnered with Taste Project to create an outward facing campaign for Taste Community Restaurant’s newest location opening in Arlington, Texas.

Taste Project is a 501(c)3 non-profit established simply to feed people one community at a time. Their first “pay-what-you-can” Taste Community Restaurant was established in Fort Worth as a sustainable solution to end hunger in the city.

ACCOUNT DIRECTOR

Julie Williams and her team trusted our PR Campaigns class to play a part in their future launch. My class trusted me to lead us into battle.

My co-Account Director and I oversaw 3 teams: Creative, Outreach, and Research, in which I primarily collaborated with the Research and Creative teams to oversee their executions.

We carved the campaign out of 3 main goals:

1.

perception

Enlightening the Arlington Community on Taste Community Restaurant's Mission to Alleviate Food Insecurity

2.

volunteers

Increasing awareness in Arlington about the crucial role of volunteers for Taste Community Restaurant

research

The research team conducted 2 focus groups consisting of 23 UTA faculty and staff. Additionally, a survey gathered a consensus of thoughts and opinions of Arlington residents to support the responses from the focus groups.

outreach

Media pitch sent to local DFW ​journalists to cover the future ​opening of Taste Community ​Restaurant’s new location in ​Arlington.

CREATIVE

The Creative team set out to accomplish a few things with their deliverables.

First, change the perception of Taste Community Restaurants from being seen as soup kitchens to family-friendly establishments.

Second, create accessible restaurant collateral material that caters to the wide audience this restaurant reaches.

Third, efforts that will establish Taste Community Restaurant as a staple visit when in Arlington, Texas.

tASTE BUDS

Taste Community Restaurant’s volunteers are called ‘Taste Buds’. Upon hearing this, our 6 Taste Buddies were born.

These were developed in order to create a thematically friendly environment for the restaurant while also establishing brand consistency amongst all created marketing material for this campaign.

The Taste Buds were created in Adobe Illustrator.

placemats

To further drive home the idea of family-friendliness, and also cater to food-insecure families who have children and need entertainment should they have to wait for a table, the Creative Team produced 3 educational placemats.

These placemats not only offer tangible entertainment, the educational material was produced in conjunction with Taste Community Restaurant’s in-house nutritionist. This was to ensure the material serves Taste Project’s overarching mission to curb food insecurity in the Tarrant County community.

Additionally, the Taste Buds are placed throughout these placemats.

The deliverables were created in Adobe Illustrator and Canva.

instruction redesign

According to a survey conducted by the Creative team that was given to Taste Community Restaurant servers, 3 out of 5 clients had questions about the payment model.

Although there are instructions in the restaurant on how the “pay-what-you-can” model works, they seemed unclear and led to confusion for patrons.

We recommended a redesign of the instruction pamphlets placed at each table.

This instructional pamphlet was created in Adobe Illustrator.

Menu Redesign

Similarly to the instruction pamphlets, 30-50% of clients had questions about the menu, according to the survey.

The survey also revealed that there is a 60-80% food waste yield, since Taste Community Restaurant doesn’t allow to-go containers. Portion sizes at the restaurant are larger than normal, since the meals provided may be someone’s first and/or only meal of the day.

Keeping all of this in mind, the menu was redesigned to include a half-portion option.

This menu was designed in Adobe Illustrator.

WALL MURAL

Our final, and most ambitious deliverable, was a proposed mural inside the restaurant. Intended as another service-learning opportunity for art students at UTA, this mural establishes Taste Community Restaurant as a staple landmark in Arlington.

The hand-drawn mockup includes the Taste Buds and menu items situated among sites like Globe Life Field, Six Flags Over Texas, The University of Texas at Arlington, and the Cowboys Stadium.

This mural also serves as a photo opportunity for patrons to tag on social media platforms with a designated hashtag to drive word-of-mouth advertising.

Finally, to tie this deliverable into the family-friendly messaging, we recommended Taste Community Restaurant enact a challenge for kids to find the Taste Buds placed throughout the mural. If they do, they receive a branded button as a prize.

The mural was hand-drawn and the buttons were created on Adobe Illustrator.

FOOD INFLUENCER REVIEW

After we pitched our campaign to Taste Project, it was time to put some action behind the words. When famous TikTok food influencer Keith Lee announced he was coming to Dallas, I messaged him and explained our PR campaign + Taste Project’s mission.

Low and behold a few days later, Keith Lee not only visited the Fort Worth location, but gave a generous donation to the non-profit. Here’s what he had to say to his 18 million TikTok and Instagram followers: