Kured = meat and cheese, not charcuterie
Kured is a build-your-own box meat and cheese concept with stores in Boston and New York. I was approached by the founder of Kured to define their brand moving forward and help design the New York store which launched in late 2022.
The new Kured brand all stemmed from a conversation with Gilli, the founder of Kured, that charcuterie should be more casual and approachable. She outlined the idea that her brand needed to be edgy, casual, and flip the idea of “charcuterie” around. It all came down to the idea that it’s just meat and cheese.
I took a trip down to NYC and spent a lot of time in the East Village to get inspiration. Gilli mentioned they were looking at locations in East Village and near Washington Square. They eventually chose the Washington Square spot for it’s proximity to NYU and the park, but I kept the East Village palette and materials when working with Opa, the architecture firm that was chosen to build out the concept.
The goal: Evolve the Kured brand and New York store experience to reflect an edgier vibe while keeping it aligned with the original Boston store.
My role: Design and Brand consultant
My initial pitch
Walking around the East Village I saw a lot of graffiti and metal doors with cement textures, neon signs, and years of stickers and posters pasted on top of one another. Kured needed to blend into New York.
I created a list of materials and a mood board for opa architecture to pull from.
Opa concepts
opa came back with a couple concepts and Gilli, myself, and the rest of her team chose a few options from these. Builds like this get expensive so there were some concessions along the way, but the title image of this page is a final rendering with a couple more angles shown below.
The final concept
In real life
