Pönyaki Street Food Concept
The city streets of Osaka, Japan are overflowing with eateries serving Takoyaki, a round, savory, bite-sized snack. Pönyaki brings together the round form paired with a toy providing a sense of surprise and delight for the guest. This is a spot where people on their lunch breaks, or those strolling between bars late into the evening can stop for a spontaneous bite.
Ponyaki represented MG2 in the IRDC 2018 Retail Concept Showcase.
Retail Design
Spatial Design
Branding
Customer Experience
Concept:
[pönyaki is gachapon + takoyaki]
Gachapon [ガチャポン] are vending machine-dispensed capsule toys popular in Japan and elsewhere. By nature they are “blind purchases” as what is within the capsule will vary. They are usually high quality miniature figurines of popular franchises and characters.
Takoyaki [たこ焼き] is a savory and sweet ball-shaped Japanese snack made of a wheat flour-based batter and cooked in a special molded pan. Typically filled with octopus (tako) and topped with tempura, pickled ginger, green onion, and a special sauce.
Brand Development
The customer marks down their choices and desired amount, but they wont know which food has which filling until biting in. Inspiration was taken from the gachapon toys, where each capsule is identical but you don’t know what toy is within until opened.
Posters and graphics explored the playful nature of the O within the branding. The O manages to reference the round nature of the food, serve as a repeating background graphic, appear as an expressive emoji-like face, and even become suckers for the octopus tentacle that would become commonplace in the visuals.
