Mayor Mamdani just hired a bunch of ‘grocery store nerds’ to design NYC’s city-owned markets

FastCompany: A consortium of designers, branding professionals, and grocery experts have been named to design a visual identity for New York City’s municipal grocery stores. Their goal? To make something that looks authentically New York. New York City’s Economic Development Corp. (NYCEDC) said Tuesday it had selected four firms— Gander , Librarie , Noble Signs , and Seven Roots —to brand the city’s five forthcoming grocery stores, one for each borough.

Gander, the strategic branding firm behind visual identities for brands like the squeeze-bottle olive oil Graza and Yellow Bird hot sauce, will be the project lead and oversee research, strategy, naming, brand application, and brand development. Its inclusion suggests the finished product could borrow from the best practices of some of recent history’s most popular direct-to-consumer brands. “We consider ourselves, for better or worse, grocery store nerds, and probably get way too much enjoyment out of wandering the aisles of grocery stores everywhere we travel,” Gander partner Mike McVicar tells Fast Company .

Gander calls it a dream project since it’s a major civic project for the city the company loves, and it’s a grocery store. “Our top priority is to help make this ambitious effort to address food insecurity in our city as wildly successful as possible, and ultimately help as many people as possible,” McVicar says. “That means building a brand that resonates with an infinitely diverse population of New York City that has really high standards.” The boutique brand consultancy Librarie, which has advised brands like Stiller’s and the THC-infused beverage brand Cann , will co-lead on brand positioning, voice, copy, and naming.

Librarie’s Fern Diaz says she hopes the consortium can turn the language around affordability and abundance from “words that can feel like policy jargon” into something that New Yorkers “feel and experience.” The consultancy Noble Signs, a multidisciplinary creative studio that founded the New York Sign Museum , will consult on New York City history and culture so the final visual assets feel authentic to the city. Noble Signs has done work for Ace’s Pizza in Brooklyn and created hand-painted signage for New York City Councilman Justin Brannan’s Coney Island office.

Seven Roots, an independent grocery store design and development firm, will advise on food retail, operations, and integrating the brand into the physical retail environment. The only firm in the consortium that isn’t based in New York City, Seven Roots has developed independent grocery stores and community-owned food co-ops.

Seven Roots managing partner Heather Lazickas says the firm hopes their work contributes to a solid foundation for the NYC Groceries initiative, and she adds that the stores “will undoubtedly offer valuable lessons and inspiration for communities across the country working to strengthen their food access landscapes.” The NYCEDC announced in May that it was opening requests for proposals for NYC Groceries.

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This initiative represents a significant effort to enhance public services through branding, which is impactful for the industry, while the concept of branding municipal services is relatively novel and highly relevant to brand strategy professionals.