A year in review: March 2018 to March 2019 at Prana Foods
There’s a reason it takes 100-person companies many months and often the better part of a year to start and finish a rebrand. It’s because it’s a lot of work! I mean, every time you change one tiny detail—like the quantity in the bag (which affects the nutrition and instructions), like the acquisition of a different brand of AWESOME parchment (that changes the instructions), like the name (well that’s a big thing, but you get my point) a whole waterfall of things needs to change along with it. I won’t bore you with all the details. But suffice it to say, it’s a gargantuan job. And if you want to do it nicely, you have to wait for certain details to gel before you can call one step done to move onto the next. And when you realize you need to change an earlier step, it starts all over again! So after a year of working on it, I’m very proud to unveil our completed rebrand. It’s been a labor of love and the result is beautiful, if I say so myself.
New Name: Prana to the People
This name is the result of combining our mission, which is uplifting people, with the predominant quality of our food which is uplifting your prana, and the bit of attitude we like to embody, which brings power, and prana, to the people. You get it, right? And maybe we’ll have a ready made jingle!
Back in 2007 when we came up with the idea of Prana Pancakes, Prana was not yet a crowded name space. In fact, many people didn’t even know what Prana meant! Our original idea was to have each product be called Prana + (the specific food name.) But, many others have grown to love love the idea of Prana, and after the passage of several years we began to feel that it could cause some confusion if we kept it so generic. We will have a chai product eventually, and there is now another company called Prana Chai. We knew we needed to keep Prana in the name. After all, there’s no other way to explain what high prana foods are. But it needed to be unique enough to stand as a distinct brand name for any product we could come up with. And we wanted the name to whisper “social impact” within the very name. And so, we bring you...(drumroll please!) Prana to the People!
New Brand Pillars: PRANA as an Acronym. Should we say Prana Pillars?
With the new name came a whole new feeling around our products, purpose and message. This brought to mind the existential question: Who has more impact? Product or Marketing? hahaha. :) It became a spiraling question and a spiraling process. The questions we had to answer: Who are we? Who are our customers? What is our mission? What are our brand pillars? The answers to these questions came easily and dovetailed together beautifully when we made the letters in PRANA into an acronym. Check out our new Brand Pillars! We love them. They look more artfully arranged on the back of the package, so be sure to visit the store as well! Special thanks to Christa Velbel, our amazing, creative and generous copywriter.
New Packages: Do they remind you of Shepard Fairey?
We hope so! Because we copied his style pretty blatantly. I’m a big fan of Shepard Fairey art. It’s gorgeous. It’s fanciful. It’s bold. It has an attitude, and yet it is infused with love, kindness and a whisper of divinity. In pop culture, it whispers or shouts “social justice and higher good” without saying a word. We wanted our new look to convey just that. And we’re still and always open to iteration. What do you think? Do you love our new packages just as they are? How could they be improved? Feel free to share in the comments. We love comments! Special thanks to Tania Vasallo of The Courage to be Happy. She is an expert in food branding and so generous with her gifts. Boy did we have a good time!
New Products: We’re giving you Options!
A few times since we developed our cookie mix, we’ve had a few people comment that there are too many chips. Too many!!?? You’ve got to be kidding, right? I mean, aren’t cookies basically an excuse to eat warm, gooey chocolate chips? Aren’t they just a warm, crunchy-on-the-outside, chewy-on-the-inside vehicle for those melt in your mouth drops of organic goodness that you can eat as many as you want and feel good about it? Yes, I know, the dough is good too. But still, I never would have guessed that the cookies could be SO GOOD with half the chips! And so, we present our Classic “Chippy” version of our cookie kit. When we tried it, believe it or not, my son and I actually preferred it. We could hardly believe it. My husband still prefers the chippiest ones, and that’s fine. But the point is, you have options now. Thank you to Debra for the suggestion! We should call it Debra’s Cookie Kit in her honor! Well, Jenny preferred them that way too. There are a few. Last of all, we now have a chipless “add your own flavor” version for those who are chocolate allergic, stockpile their own chips in the pantry or just love a bargain. The chipless version is designed to retail for $5 or $6. Can you believe it? It’s gluten free, it’s vegan, it’s organic (not certified yet) 99% organic to be precise, and never ever GMO. And so reasonable! It will make a dozen cookies, or one graham cracker pie shell! Check in recipes for that option. :)
New Ease of Use: Our products are now Cookie Kits!
Something we realized while we were creating our new products is that we wanted our customers to have an amazing and consistent experience. So, we took a step in that direction by making it a kit! It’s not just mix inside anymore. It also contains the parchment so they won’t stick to your cookie sheet. And not just any parchment! Our cookie kits contain the very best parchment ever made: by Zenlogy. Please thank them for partnering with us by buying their parchment when you finally need a sheet of it besides the one that comes in your cookie kit! You can also buy their parchment on Amazon. Their round sheets are perfect cake pan liners.
Trust us, once you try this brand of parchment, you’ll never go back. It’s environmentally friendly and seems to last forever. I have only thrown away parchment because it got dusty and never because it burned or wore out. Other big name brands burn at high temperatures, stick to things, are weird shapes or have other issues in general. Zenlogy is perfect all around.
We did make a few cookie kits before we partnered with Zenlogy, that have a bargain basement parchment in them. If you get one of those earlier ones, (it has white parchment in it) don’t worry, we’ll give you a 10% off coupon good for your next order. Just ping us by email or reply to your order confirmation to let us know. We already sealed the bags, so it’s too late to take it out. And bags are expensive, and you care about the environment so you wouldn’t want us to throw them away!
In any case, we’re excited about how far we’ve come, and excited to share all of it with you. Now that you’ve read all, here’s a shortcut to the cookie kit sale. You already know that besides containing the very best parchment ever made, it of course contains the very best cookie mix ever made too. :)
So much love & ta ta for now!
Cheers,
-Lisa