Ernesto
De Leonardi

Yellow Rooster Coffee Imports was a new specialty green coffee merchant entering a competitive US market: with strong producer relationships and a clear ambition to stand out. As part of the internal marketing team, I led the brand strategy work to define where Yellow Rooster needed to go: not just what it sold, but what it stood for, and how that belief could be felt at every touchpoint.

Yellow Rooster was operating as a purchase brand: roasters bought, but the relationship stopped there. There was no structured narrative, no consistent voice, and no clear positioning that set the brand apart in an increasingly competitive specialty coffee market.

The opportunity was to transform Yellow Rooster into a usage brand: one that roasters return to, advocate for, and genuinely integrate into their craft.

The strategic process began with a full brand audit: mapping strengths, gaps, and competitive whitespace. From there, I developed a positioning framework built around a single insight: Yellow Rooster isn't just a supplier, it's a cultural bridge between producers and roasters.

This reframe shifted the entire strategic direction: from transactional to relational, from product-led to story-led. The brand idea, purpose, values, and communication architecture were all built from that foundation.

The strategy translated into a cohesive brand system across three key areas. The website was redesigned to reflect the new positioning: making the sourcing story and producer relationships central to the experience.

Four origin-specific coffee sacks were created for Colombia, Peru, Mexico, and Guatemala, turning the core product into a tangible expression of the brand's cultural identity. A communications framework was established across email marketing and Instagram, giving the team a clear voice and content direction to build community over time.

The new website launched successfully, and the origin sacks were received with strong enthusiasm from roasters and the wider coffee community. The Instagram channel gained early traction, driven by the authentic, culture-first tone established in the strategy. Client feedback consistently highlighted the clarity and coherence the new positioning brought to the brand.

A normal production day could include a misconfigured machine, misprinted labels, runs that stretched longer than they needed to. All of it traced back to two oversized printed sheets on the machine: small type, no logic that followed the production flow. Reading them under pressure, mid-shift, was the job before the job. These were signals that pointed to something worth solving.

Eight to twelve variables per coffee run, all configured from an oversized printed sheet. The margin for error was built into the format. Misconfigured machines meant rework. Slow changeovers meant lost time. When the shift closed, the data closed with it: findable in theory, unreachable in the rhythm of a production day.

Each operator read the same process through a different code. The goal was threefold: reduce the time between configuration changes, remove the dependency on a format that was producing involuntary errors, and give the team a single language for how the day runs.

Rather than digitizing the existing process, the design started from the operator outward. The question wasn't what does the system need to track, but what does the operator need to feel and know at each moment. The answer shaped everything: a step-by-step flow that follows the physical logic of moving around the machine, surfaces information at the right moment, and smooths the rhythm between configuration changes and production runs. The sequence reduces cognitive load, smooths the transition between runs, and replaces abrupt energy spikes with a pace that's easier to sustain across a full shift.

The app organizes the production day from start to finish. A dashboard shows the daily order queue. A step-by-step configuration flow guides each changeover, removing decision load and preventing unforced errors. Operators can flag stock running low, log routine machine maintenance, and access tutorials for major changeovers. The shift closes with an automated production report. One interface. One language.

Currently in active testing on the floor. Early use has confirmed the core premise: faster changeovers, fewer unforced errors, a configuration process that no longer depends on paper. Ready to scale.

Every green coffee sack that left Yellow Rooster used to look the same: a generic bag stamped with basic information, indistinguishable from any other supplier. As part of the internal marketing team, I led the rebranding of the core product: transforming four origin-specific sacks into a cohesive illustrated series, each with its own identity, supported by a coordinated launch across website, Instagram, and email.

The original sacks were functional but invisible: a missed opportunity to communicate Yellow Rooster's core belief that every coffee carries a culture. With no visual differentiation between origins and no hierarchy in the information presented, the product wasn't telling any story.

The challenge was to turn the sack itself into a brand touchpoint: something roasters would notice, remember, and want to share.

The process started with qualitative research: conducting in-depth interviews with producers from each of the four origins. Those conversations were complemented by a deeper investigation into each country's historical, political, and economic relationship with coffee: understanding not just the product, but the context that shaped it.

Together, those findings surfaced the insights that guided every creative decision: what made each origin distinct, what producers wanted roasters to understand, and what information genuinely mattered at the point of purchase. From there, I developed a content hierarchy for each sack and the creative briefs that guided the illustration series: ensuring that the artwork and information on every bag were grounded in something real.

Each of the four origins: Colombia, Peru, Mexico, and Guatemala: received a bespoke illustrated sack, replacing the previous generic packaging. The illustrations formed a series, giving the product line a collectible quality while reinforcing Yellow Rooster's identity as a culturally-driven brand.

The launch of each sack was treated as a product release: announced through the website, Instagram, and email marketing, building anticipation and giving the coffee community a reason to engage with each new arrival.

The sacks generated strong enthusiasm from roasters and the wider coffee community, with the Instagram launches driving notable engagement. The new packaging became one of the most visible expressions of the brand's repositioning: turning a previously invisible product into a recognisable and shareable brand asset.

Research into the New Zealand specialty coffee market pointed to a clear gap: every brand was selling a fast, functional experience, and nobody was selling rest. El Descanso was the response. The idea of rest came from a photograph taken in the mountains of southern Colombia: a visit to a Jesuit coffee farm that captured exactly what the brand needed to stand for. A specialty coffee micro-roastery launched in New Zealand around one countercultural proposition: coffee as an invitation to pause, not a tool for productivity.

As co-founder, my role spanned the entire brand from conception to launch: brand strategy, visual identity, packaging, supply chain, and communications.

New Zealand's specialty coffee scene was crowded: and uniform. Most brands sourced from the same suppliers and competed on convenience. Walk into any specialty coffee shop in New Zealand and the coffee was the same: only the branding changed.

Finding a position in that market meant finding one that was genuinely available: and building a brand with enough conviction to hold it against a category that had settled into a consensus nobody had questioned.

Research pointed to one consistent gap: the communal side of coffee was unclaimed. The decision was to build the brand around that gap: not competing on what everyone else was competing on, but claiming the territory nobody had touched.

The idea that anchored it: the Latin American tradition of rest, introduced into a culture that treated coffee as momentum, not as pause.

Aesthetically rooted in ex libris illustration, the logo is a fine-line human figure: seated but not at ease, resting but mid-thought. The posture is Socratic: the kind of pause that opens questions rather than closing them.

The packaging system was a product architecture decision as much as a visual one. Four categories: Community, Pachamama, Harvest, and Experimental: defined by the intersection of coffee quality, consumer research, and price point. Each with its own design, its own story, its own place in the range.

Community: Multi-producer lots. Exceptional coffees made by many hands.

Pachamama: Comfort-driven coffees. The creative feminine, the nurturing earth.

Harvest: Clean, precise, fine lots organised by the logic of production.

Experimental: Small-batch, curated, chamanic. The rare and the unexpected.

El Descanso established a presence in New Zealand's specialty coffee community from the first release. The packaging became the brand's most consistent point of conversation: customers cited it as the reason they first bought, and the coffee consistently met or exceeded what the design had promised.

Within the community, the brand became a reference point: other roasters started talking about it, and wholesale interest emerged organically.

Daily Daily is one of those coffee shops that earns its place in a city: sidewalk tables, good light, the kind of spot you return to. For their fifth anniversary, they came to El Descanso. As their roaster and wholesale partner, the relationship was already there. I took it further, leading the full collaboration from concept to delivery.

The tradition was a guest roaster each year. This time, as El Descanso’s co-founder, we offered something more: a limited visual identity built for the occasion: to dress their packaging, merchandise, and cards in something designed specifically for them.

The challenge was making it feel like Daily Daily while making it unmistakably El Descanso. A temporary visual handshake between two brands that speak the same language.

There was one thing Daily Daily did consistently well: they made the city feel slower. That is the same thing El Descanso has always been about.

The brief came from that convergence: El Descanso’s illustrated world stepping onto Daily Daily’s sidewalk. Their palette: navy, pink, grey, and white: became the colour brief. The visual language was already established. This was its urban application.

The output covered three formats: packaging wraps, anniversary t-shirts, and cards. The coffee sat alongside them: a limited edition roast produced exclusively for Daily Daily.

Across every piece, the visual system held: El Descanso’s illustrated language working inside Daily Daily’s palette. Coherent with both brands, owned by neither alone. A fifth anniversary edition made to feel like it mattered.

The partnership performed on two levels. Creatively, it extended El Descanso’s visual world into a new context without losing coherence. Commercially, it moved: a 25% sales increase and 20% mailing list growth, driven by an audience that came in through Daily Daily’s community and found El Descanso waiting.