Background

Essex Pearl is a brand new seafood-centric dining destination in New York City. Located on the Lower East Side, in the lower level right below the new Essex Market, this establishment offers a full-service dining room, a bar, and soon - a fresh seafood counter with highly curated fresh seafood options with chefs available for consult. 

The Rebranding

Essex Pearl was opened in 2019 for a brief moment before it closed due to the pandemic. The downtime served as a perfect opportunity for the team to reevaluate and reimagine the restaurant to be more efficient and more focused on better serve the community.

Essex Pearl rebranding takes its inspiration from the old world travel across Southeast Asia, a journey through the charming country sides of Bali, through the iconic floating market in Thailand,  to the modern bustling city of Singapore. Our goal at Essex Pearl is to bring you a taste of these endearingly charming parts of the world and package them in a modern New York City setting.

Addressing Photography

Essex Pearl's signature pattern becomes the signature background to take all the Essex Pearl Dishes. This allows us to inject the brand identity into the photography easily. Combined with some old-world ephemera as props to go along with the food photography we created a new brand language that evokes the image of leisure travel across Southeast Asia.

Building an Online Experience

Along with the rollout of the new brand, we developed a brand new Mobile-friendly website using a custom database that would allow the restaurant to change the menu as they see fit. The new website also features a PDF generator that creates the pages for the restaurant's physical menu.

Spatial and Environmental Design

Even though Essex Pearl is located inside a food hall, this 50-seating space is designed to offer a cozy sanctuary that’s well separated from the rest of the market, with a fun casual ambiance perfect for dining. Just like the menu, the Essex Pearl restaurant also features ephemera and objects reminiscent of artifacts found during the old world travel across Southeast Asia framed in a modern New York City style architecture.

Collateral and Experience

We also work closely with the Essex Pearl team to develop a series of collateral to help streamline their operation as well as improve the guests' experience at the restaurant. This includes everything from coasters, to-go cocktail packaging, and a digital QR code menu. 

Essex Pearl at Midnight Cafe

Essex Pearl got invited for a 3 months residency at the Midnight Cafe. We worked with the Essex Pearl and Midnight Cafe team to create a cobranding identity, graphics for the space, a special menu, food photography, and a launch promotion for this program.