A collage of various Beggars Pizza marketing executions spanning digital, print, and packaging.

Beggars Pizza

If There's One Thing Chicago Loves, It's Pizza

There's no shortage of authentic slices available throughout Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana—but it was our team’s job to show there’s only one Beggars Pizza.

A Pizza Chain with Growing Pains

With dedication to both quality food and its communities, Beggars Pizza has been feeding loyal fans for nearly 50 years. In that time, the Italian pizzeria chain grew from one restaurant on Chicago’s South Side to 28 locations throughout the surrounding areas. But all that expansion led to a lack of consistency among other hurdles. It was time to create a roadmap for the next half century ahead. The first order of business was to establish a consistent brand across all locations and all marketing efforts. By strengthening the consistency of the brand across all platforms and locations, we were able to create trust and elevate expectations for the brand on every level.

Branding

Creating a Brand New Old School

Beggars Pizza is first and foremost a family business, and we worked with the family at its helm to ensure the next era of the brand rang true to their vision. The logo, designed by their grandfather, was a must-keep, as well as the community atmosphere and lay-it-on-thick attitude that sets Beggars Pizza apart from the national chain competition. With these essentials in tow, we created a visual identity and messaging that bring the nostalgic-but-not-outdated, irreverent-but-not-rude, and humorous-but-not-corny brand into its future.

The cover and color palette spread of the Beggars Pizza brand guidelines book.
A grid of pages from the Beggars Pizza brand book spanning fonts and colors.
A page from the Beggars Pizza brand book detailing logo usage rules.

28

Cohesively Branded Locations

The 28 locations were given a fairly high degree of autonomy. Gradually, this became multiple social media channels, variations in logo use, promotional materials, menu items and more. We eliminated all these inconsistencies and unified the brand at every touchpoint.

A collage of custom Beggars Pizza illustrations, including food items and brand messaging.

Food Photography

Palate-Pleasing Photography

Food photography is one of the most important elements when it comes to marketing a restaurant brand. We captured every sauce drip, cheese pull, and built-to-perfection burger in a photoshoot that showcases the best of the Beggars Pizza menu in a consistent visual style. The resulting photo library is an asset for use across branding and marketing executions.

A burger, wrap, and chicken sandwich with a background of a red illustrated pattern and the headline “Behold. Then Devour.”
A server holding two steaming plates of saucy pasta dishes from Beggars Pizza.
A large meatball sub topped with cheese sits on a plate with various Beggars Pizza menu items in the background.

By creating a consistent essence, we gave Beggars Pizza one brand, not splintered brands across a variety of mediums. We refined existing brand assets rather than starting from scratch. That way, current fans would recognize the brand, but see it represented consistently no matter where it came to life. This also made it easy for all family and franchise locations to unify under the new look and feel.

Business Essentials

Fresh Executions Across Brand Packaging

At Beggars Pizza, “business essentials” means pizza and appetizer boxes, to-go bags, and menus. The lack of consistency from one location to the next did not reflect the consistent quality of food Beggars delivered. We changed all that by establishing a unified look and personality across all their business essentials at every location.

Various sizes of pizza, slice, and appetizer boxes with the Beggars Pizza branding and messaging.
A page of the Beggars Pizza eat-in menu featuring appetizers and wings.
A variety of Beggars Pizza menus, including the kids menu, drink menu, and catering menu.

By creating a consistent brand look and feel across all their business essentials, a higher level of trust is established in the mind of the consumer. A trust that they will get the consistently delicious food they’ve come to expect from Beggars.

Website

A Site to Feed the Senses

Every delicious detail baked into the Beggars Pizza brand was pulled through to its redesigned website. The site features a unified brand design, a humorous attitude comes across in the tone of voice, and the new photography gives each menu item the appetite appeal it deserves. Not only is the site easy to use, but offers all the personality and visual stimulation needed to make the site a truly mouthwatering scroll.

When you launch a new and improved Beggars Pizza website, you want to make sure people know about it. We created emails and social media posts that carried the fresh brand look and voice across each announcement, inviting them to experience the new branding and improved functionality for themselves.

Marketing

Selling Chicago's Slice of Choice

One of the first things we did to ensure brand consistency was get rid of the different, inconsistent social channels built by the individual locations, and establish channels that conveyed a singular look and tone of voice. After that, we rolled the brand out across emails, social media content, direct mail coupons, paid search ads, annual coupon calendars for rewards club members, and more.

A grid featuring a variety of Beggars Pizza loyalty program emails, including a Halloween email, football-themed email, and New Years email.

Marketing

A Daily Dose of Brand In Your Diet

Every year Beggars gives coupon calendars to their rewards club members. 2023 was the first year we integrated the look, and humorous tone of voice into a branded piece customers interacted with every day.

The front cover and an inside spread of the Beggars Pizza customer calendar, featuring a “$3 off” deal and calendar pages.
A phone featuring the Beggars Pizza Instagram post announcing the release of the 2023 customer calendar.
Various spreads from the inside of the Beggars Pizza customer calendar, with promotional discounts featured on every page.

Marketing

Official Pizza Partner of the Chicago White Sox

The new Beggars brand fit in perfectly with the flavor of the South Side. We were able to bring this look and feel into the ballpark signage and in-park Beggars Pizza Pub. So even at the ballpark, brand consistency is the name of the game.

A billboard at Guaranteed Rate Field of a pepperoni slice lifting with a cheese pull and the headline “Every Inning Deserves a Stretch.”
A billboard at Guaranteed Rate Field featuring slices of pepperoni, sausage, and cheese pizza and a headline reading “Talk About a Lineup.”

A strong brand is one that stays consistent across a multitude of mediums. One that’s immediately recognized at every interaction. We’ve had the privilege of partnering with Beggars Pizza to create branding that connects, establishes trust, and builds customer loyalty with a look, feel, and personality that people love.

“It has been a pleasure to work with the entire team. Their creativity and passion make marketing exciting again and we love the refresh they did on our brand. We look forward to another year of a great partnership.”

Amanda Garetto-Melvin | Beggars Pizza

Related Projects

Let Us Help You Achieve Your Goals

Get Started Today