Recast Menu Products Can Define a Brand

In retail, you don’t have to have expensive products to make your brand unique. Very often, a recasting of something boring and conventional that you sell can make your brand unique. This principal applies most often with food.

7 Eleven Slurpee cups at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington. The sister product Big Gulp is a mere recast of something familiar.

These are products that are made with everyday things, but branded and packaged in such a way as to make them more valuable.

  • Egg McMuffin (a new twist on eggs andEnglish muffins)
  • Blooming Onion at Outback (a new twist on onion rings)
  • Big Gulp at 7-Eleven (a big cup of soda was clever in its time)
  • Iceberg lettuce wraps at P.F. Changs
  • Gusburger at White Spot in Charlottesville. This is a hamburger with cheese and an egg. It is a crazed cult favorite. There was also a Grillswith, which I think involved a donut fried.

These are all items that are conventional to the extreme. But with a bit of spin and sense of fun, they recast the boring and make the brand more interesting. This then gives the company something with a cult following.

Recently, BrandlandUSA ran across the Woolworth Pic ‘n’ Mix page on Facebook. Seems like there is a group that wants to bring back a method of buying candy at Britain’s Woolworth stores. The group is called Bring Back Woolworth’s Pic ‘N’ Mix Cups.

Writes the author of the page:

Since 2003 Woolworth’s has provided us with the opportunity to buy as many sweets as we can cram into a cup for £1.99 or £2.99 (dependent on size of cup). Giving us great value for money as the only other way of purchasing pic ‘n’ mix is through weight which is both extortionate in price and unreliable. (You never know how much it costs til they weigh it at the till!!) Woolworths have now taken away the pic ‘n’ mix cups and where cups still remain they must be weighed to determine the price to pay. Do you want to live in a world without Pic ‘N’ Mix cups? I know I don’t. Join the group and help bring back the Pic ‘N’ Mix Cups.

Author

  • Garland Pollard

    J. Garland Pollard IV is editor/publisher of BrandlandUSA. Since 2006, the website BrandlandUSA.com has chronicled the history and business of America’s great brands.

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