Guckenheimer’s Brand Refresh Emphasizes Community, Health, Responsibility, and Innovation

Guckenheimer today announced that it has refreshed its brand to highlight and better represent elements of its service delivery that make it unique and will continue to be differentiators going forward. These include four hallmarks of service delivery: community, health, responsibility, and innovation.

The 60-year-old company has grown from its origins as a pop-up sandwich stand in the San Francisco Bay area to a leading food services provider operating hundreds of locations across the United States. Today, Guckenheimer delivers food programs designed by culinary teams to meet the custom needs of clients through on-site cafes, restaurants, coffee bars, micro kitchens, catered events and other dining and snacking venues.

The company’s brand refresh reflects the company’s food-centric culture, industry trends, as well as the qualities its clients crave in their dining experience. These include the ability to foster connection with customers, employees, and their local communities, prioritization of whole-person health, active participation in eco-friendly sustainability efforts, and a hunger for innovation through technology and insights.

“Our mission is to create memorable food experiences that inspire a sense of connection and belonging in the workplace and surrounding communities,” said Paul Fairhead, CEO of Guckenheimer. “The enhancements we're making not just to our brand but also operationally and strategically are intended to elevate the holistic dining experience, which has other very positive workplace benefits including improved health and wellness, engagement, job satisfaction, and productivity. Our services drive connection in the workplace, between colleagues, and across communities.”

While the brand refresh emphasizes four primary areas of service delivery, the company has long-established approaches in each, including:

• Community: going back to its beginnings as a sandwich stand that relied on local partnerships, the company continues draw upon a long-established network of local producers, farmers, chefs, and cooking institutes to ensure food experiences originate from local sources and are authentically prepared. The company also helps clients foster a sense of community among their own employees through customized food programs designed to increase engagement and a sense of belonging.
• Health: the company’s approach to whole-person health begins with the food it creates and delivers. It pairs nutrition insights with consumer intelligence to develop and present menus that encourage healthy food choices and support both physical and mental wellness.
• Responsibility: the company maintains industry-leading environmental sustainability programs that reduce food waste (including menu development and culinary training), increase healthy food choices through plant-based menu offerings, reduce greenhouse emissions, among others.
• Innovation: Guckenheimer has adopted technology and practices that streamline the dining experience and drive greater cost savings through mobile ordering, badge integration, cashless payment, and self-checkout. It also promotes expanded sharing of culinary advances and kitchen efficiencies across a global platform with real time insights, allowing for quicker more aligned business decisions.

To represent these qualities from a visual branding perspective, the company has adopted a new logo, color palette, supporting imagery, and revamped website.

“From executive chefs to nutritionists to strategists, our teams are passionate about the food we deliver, and we intentionally infused our brand with elements to represent that,” said Anne Moser, COO of Guckenheimer. “Our new color palette incorporates vibrant green, orange, and yellow tones found in fresh produce to reinforce the company's commitment to high-quality, local ingredients. Our new logo presents as a ‘G’ for Guckenheimer as well as a proportionally balanced plate to signify the company’s commitment to health, wellness, and community. The right side of the mark also resembles a person to signify our focus on people—the inspiration for our food and work.”

Many of the points of emphasis in the company’s rebranding have been defining characteristics since its origin. In 1963, the company’s late founder Stewart Ritchie, as a second-year medical student at Stanford, recognized an opportunity to serve quality food on campus. With permission from the dean, he opened a sandwich stand using a medical lab cart and fresh ingredients sourced from a nearby family-run deli. As demand increased, his collaboration with a local German baker helped grow the business and inspired the brand name Guckenheimer, which loosely translates to “looking at home.”

Guckenheimer’s rebrand comes amid many recent achievements. Earlier this year, the company earned the #1 ranking for protein sustainability—for the third consecutive year—by the Humane Society of the United States. It has made significant progress in efforts to halve food waste and is closing in on its commitment to making 55% of its menu options plant-based by 2025. In partnership with the Beans is How Coalition, it is harnessing the nutritional power of beans in the creation of low-carbon meals with emissions of at least 38% below average. With the Cool Food Pledge, the company is targeting a 25% reduction in food greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Guckenheimer is a U.S.-based subsidiary of global workplace experience and facility service solutions provider, ISS, and has operated under the branding of its parent company for the last two years.