New Yonghe King Cup Designs

Soymilk is a staple in every Chinese family’s breakfast. Growing up, children have memories watching mom’s and grandmom’s painstakingly soak soybeans, hand grind them, and drain out the bits. Nothing like a glass of soymilk, made fresh. But with today’s generation living a busy lifestyle, this tradition of making your own soymilk is fading. Why bother when you can pop into a convenience store in the morning to pick up a drink? Or grab it on your way to work from one of the street vendors? Sure, these are all options, but convenience store soymilk is full of sugar and street vendors have their own ‘quality control’. Don’t even get us started on all the powdered soymilk out there, eeks!

Yonghe King is the only local fast food restaurant that still makes their soymilk fresh, every day and every 4 hours.

Thankfully, there is another (and better) option! Yonghe King is the only local fast food restaurant that still makes their soymilk fresh, every day and every 4 hours. Yup, you read right, every 4 hours. That’s some dedication, because who wants soymilk that’s been sitting around all day? What a great message, but did their customers know this? Some did, some didn’t – why was there such inconsistency? That’s where we came in and we did a bit of digging. We surveyed consumers and chatted with store managers. Flipped through their wechat posts. Sat in their restaurants for hours just listening to people’s conversations and how they interacted with staff. Looked at their communications in and out of stores, checked out their take away containers. One thing was clear, they were losing out on prime real estate! Their take away cups had cluttered and off-branded messages, so we thought, how could we better use this space?

One thing was clear, they were losing out on prime real estate! Their take away cups had cluttered and off-brand messages. So we helped fix that!

In a series of workshops, we co-created with Yonghe King to reestablish their key message for their soymilk and identify the best way to communicate this through design on their take away cups. Introducing a new logo and look and feel for the soymilk brand requires consideration – what elements do you take from the existing logo? How do we minimize any disconnect that customers may have when seeing the new design? How do we make it fresh and modern for such a traditional product? What do we want people to feel when they see it?  We made 2 major changes. First, we created a device that would communicate the freshness of their soymilk. Staff would write the time of when their soymilk was made, allowing customers to immediately see and remind them of the key message. Secondly, we updated soymilk logo. We incorporated elements from the original Yonghe King logo like the bowl and swirl of steam to give consumers a clear connection. Added a ladle to touch on the traditional factor and focused on the message of ‘Fresh soymilk, made every day’. The new cups launched this spring. Check ‘em out! Oh and if you’re lucky, you might have also seen our seasonal Chinese New Year campaign cups.