La Victoria Bakery, a 60-year-old Mexican bakery on 24th Street was a pillar of the community, one of the first Mexican businesses bustling Irish-Italian neighborhood. But just as the Latino family community lent its culture to the old neighborhood, the area was changing again with influx of new tech workers who were looking for something different.
The challenge was to update the traditional panaderia branding to something that while still authentic appealed to the tastes and aesthetic of the hipster transplants. The management was already making strides expanding on their offering of traditional Mexican breads and pastries. La Victoria invited pop-up restaurants and street cart chefs to share their commercial kitchen. They also hosted weekly events featuring up and coming chefs of nouvelle cuisine and Latino fusion food. At the same time, the he artisanos in the kitchen were expanding their repertoire to include a broader range of Latin pastries such as alfajores from Argentina and Quesadilla de Queso from El Salvador.
No strangers to Mexican American culture or baking, we were able to work with La Victoria to update their brand to reflect the new reality of the Mission District and their continuing relevance and value to it. Using old-fashioned type of wrestling posters and rough reprographics styles, we evoked the nostalgia of Mexican street culture with a hip edge.