The Secret Sandwich Co. is an Edinburgh based start-up from established restauranteurs The Rocca Group.

Offering hearty sandwiches freshly-made in their Edinburgh kitchen, the brand needed a distinct and playful identity to match it’s name.

Maguires created a unique logo marque, strap-line and graphic style to provide the in-house marketing team with a range of options for packaging and social media advertising.

Launched in mid-2022, the Secret Sandwich Co. is already less of a secret, with its deliciously hand-made (and imaginatively named) sandwiches now a firm favourite with taste-makers across the capital.

The Rocca Group was looking to expand its evening offering with the opening of Ciao, a specialist cocktail bar set within Rico’s, the renowned eatery on North Castle St in the heart of Edinburgh’s New Town.

Maguires were commissioned to create the brand for the new bar, having worked with The Rocca Group creating social content for Rico’s as well as their two sister venues: The Michelin-guided Seafood Ristorante in St Andrew’s and The Broughton in Edinburgh.

Opening November 2022, Ciao offers delicious drinks alongside cicchetti – small Italian snacks – as well as a lunch menu freshly prepared by the famed Rico’s kitchen. Their resident mixologists pride themselves on the The Negroni, a classic Italian cocktail containing gin, campari and sweet vermouth. As well as the classic version, many variations on the classic cocktail also appear on their extensive drinks menu. 

Based in the newly refurbished five star resort at Cameron House, Tamburrini & Wishart offers a contemporary and innovative dining experience with seasonal produce at its heart, headed up by famed Scottish chefs Paul Tamburrini and Martin Wishart.

Guests can look forward to a five-course tasting menu that changes every two weeks, and a three-course lunch menu embracing modern techniques while celebrating classic flavours.

Maguires was commissioned to produce a series of stills and an overarching brand film which captured the essence of the experience. Throughout the shoot, our in-house photography team fully utilised the stunning environment to showcase the restaurant in action, from the exquisitely crafted and highly complex dishes, to a series of candid images shot during service.

As result of the success of the shoot, additional stills and film were commissioned by Cameron House which introduced their new Lobby Bar cocktail menu, ‘Myths & Legends’.

The Rum Slinger is a Glasgow-based service offering its customers the ability to subscribe to a monthly delivery of three expertly selected rums from around the world.

Each month takes on a geographic theme, with tasting notes accompanying each letterbox-sized package.

Maguires were appointed to provide a social toolkit to give the start-up much-needed content to serve to prospective customers, at a time when the UK was still in lockdown.

We provided product photography tied to the theme of each release, a brand video, and a series of eye-catching typographic treatments to supplement their own organic offering.

The C&C Restaurant Group owns and operates a number of well-known restaurants in Glasgow’s City Centre, West End and Southside. Maguires were brought on board midway through 2021 to provide creative content and brand direction for two of their best-known restaurant brands, plus another exciting venue that was to launch in July.

The first of which was Halloumi, a Greek-Cypriot Mezze restaurant chain with locations in the heart of Glasgow City Centre and the trendy Southside. 

The client was keen to retain the existing logo type but felt the brand needed a distinctive tone of voice and a bolder creative positioning across their social channels.

We began by developing an expanded logo marque to incorporate a brand strapline, followed by a fresh graphic style and a wider colour palette. This graphic style took the form of a modern pattern device that referenced traditional mosaics, but featured a minimalist take on various ingredients and Greek iconography. The blocks of the pattern could then be deployed together, or separately, as part of a regular series of short animations designed to bring to life an irreverent new tone of voice, with offers and one-liners.

Regular food photography and short films were also provided on a monthly basis by our in-house team at Maguires, driving increased engagement over the 6-month period to date.

In the Summer of 2020, Rioja Finnieston underwent a dramatic transformation from a late-night bar and informal tapas spot to a refined, high-end Spanish restaurant, headed up by Michelin-starred Catalan chef Miguel Angel Mayor. Having mastered his craft in the legendary El Bulli restaurant, Chef Miguel moved to Glasgow to present his new concept and challenge preconceived ideas of fine dining. With such a unique and exciting venture, Maguires were delighted to work and collaborate with Chef Miguel.

Since Rioja re-launched in July 2021, Miguel’s concept has showcased the best of both Scottish and Iberian produce with a breath-taking array of ever-evolving dishes, all presented with playfulness and creativity. Our team has sought to capture the essence of Miguel’s gastronomic vision through photography, film, graphics, sound, and words. Beautiful and well-crafted food photography is key to our approach, as are the ‘Food Stories’ film series which articulate Miguel’s story and his approach to Rioja’s signature dishes.

Our social campaigns for Rioja launched in July 2021, with exceptionally high levels of engagement throughout. Facebook and Instagram combined have seen over 16,477 likes on organic posts, with 723,779 impressions and a 128% increase in phone calls, prompted by social media content (data extract from July-Oct 31 2021).

As Miguel’s concept evolves into 2022, so will our agile social strategy – ensuring Miguel’s innovative techniques and world-class food is showcased with both finesse and respect.

In recent years, Glasgow has developed a rich and diverse culinary scene with new restaurants and cuisines appearing on every main street. When new-kid-on-the-block Roberta’s burst on the scene in August 2021, Maguires were tasked with establishing a unique tone of voice and visual style for this glamorous City Centre restaurant and cocktail bar.

Serving primarily Italian food, Roberta’s is far from your typical ristorante, with plush velvet and leather finishes, rich warm woods, and a beautiful marble long bar for the late-night cocktail crowd. The undoubted hero of the culinary offering is the authentic wood-fired pizzas, handmade on site by famed pizzaiolo brothers Ciro and Massimo Potenza and cooked in a bespoke Neapolitan pizza oven imported from Italy.

The client was looking to capture the general buzz and ambiance of Roberta’s, so our creative studio developed a punchy new typographic style which initially featured in a series of pre-launch teaser animations and has continued to feature throughout our campaigns. Our film and photographic team also worked on site to capture the unique Roberta’s atmosphere, with pizza spinning, cocktail slinging, and story sharing all caught on camera to create a series of captivating social films.

Since launch in August 2021, Roberta’s social and digital numbers have increased, with over 2,000 on their mailing list and over 347,975 social impressions, ensuring their audience numbers are increasing month on month and engagement continues to grow.

In July 2020, Joe Lazzerini and partner Amalia Colaluca took over the reins of The Hebridean – a gastro pub in Glasgow’s vibrant West End – formerly owned by Nico Simeone.

Maguires was tasked with developing the new brand identity, photography suite, brand films and provision of an ongoing digital marketing strategy and implementation for the new venture.

After a highly successful launch in September 2020, bookings and word-of-mouth recommendations were flooding in.

Instagram followers increased by 2,702 with Facebook likes up by 764, within just 3 months. The new website also outperformed expectations, with 62,467 page views from September 2020 to December 2020 – exceptional numbers for an independent restaurant operating in a highly competitive market. The Loveable Rogue’s social audience were also highly engaged, with 105k video views and 10,714 link clicks to the website or online kiosk.

However, opening a restaurant in 2020 was not to be without its challenges. The closure of restaurants at 6pm and the ban on alcohol sales in October was followed by a second three-week lockdown in November and December.

Having anticipated the arrival of this second wave of restrictions, ‘The Rogue at Home’ was developed – providing a beautifully boxed ‘at home’ offering of The Rogue’s popular Sunday Roast. This was quickly followed up in December with The Loveable Rogue’s Christmas Day Dinner Box, a four-course festive feast delivered to your door.

Maguires provided the branding, accompanying films and stills to promote both new offerings.

At time of writing, ‘The Rogue at Home’ continues to provide diners a unique at home dining experience as anticipation builds for the reopening of the restaurant in the later part of December (2020).

Stravaigin is one of the best-known restaurants and bars in Glasgow. For over 20 years, they’ve taken pride in using local produce to create internationally-inspired Scottish dishes.

Having been approached to promote Stravaigin’s monthly 5 course fine dining events, we were first tasked with refining the Stravaigin brand.

The logo had gone through a number of iterations over the last 20 years, with several versions still in use throughout the restaurant. We simplified the original logo using typography sympathetic with the Art Nouveau style of the original brand.

Previously hidden within the logo, the ‘Think Global, Eat Local’ ethos was elevated to its own brand marque, acting as a companion to the main logo. This ethos was the essence of their brand, so by creating a separate marque and producing it as a simple ink stamp, we allowed this ethos to be branded on everything that they do.

In addition to the logo, we introduced a new brand colour – influenced by the dark natural wood interior and game-filled menu. This helped provide a fresh look for the staff, with uniforms and hand-stamped business cards.

Finally, we designed a series of menus, from À La Carte to Brunch, Cocktails to Daily Specials, and everything in-between.

The new brand allowed us to create a unique look-and-feel across all communications, including a series of targeted social media campaigns. The first of which was a campaign to promote the new À La Carte menu from Chef James MacRae.

In addition to the branding and marketing responsibilities, the Maguires in-house team provided all photography used across the paid-for social campaigns.

Stravaigin is one of the best-known restaurants and bars in Glasgow. For over 20 years, they’ve taken pride in using local produce to create internationally-inspired Scottish dishes.

Maguires were approached to provide a distinctive advertising style and marketing strategy to promote Stravaigin’s monthly 5 course fine dining events. Each event had a unique culinary focus, with the menus taking inspiration from a particular country or world region.

The creative had to be distinctively ‘Stravaigin’ in style, whilst also illustrating the geographical focus of that particular month.

Taking influence from the reclaimed fixtures and salvaged antiques found inside Stravaigin, we identified geographical and culinary features from each of the countries to create unique artworks for each event. This led to multiple creative executions for our targeted social media advertising campaign, as well as posters, flyers, emails and menus for the event staff.

Having already redesigned the Stravaigin brand, we were keen to provide a strong creative rationale to tie all of these events together along with the new brand. As ‘stravaig’ is an old Scots word meaning ‘to wander’, we proposed presenting each of the events as part of a series, which we called ‘One Night Wanders’.

Having worked with Nico on the branding of his ‘111 by Nico’ restaurant, Maguires were again tasked with creating branding and signage for the new restaurant.

‘Six by Nico’ is the brain-child of renowned Glasgow chef Nico Simeone. Located on the fashionable Finnieston Strip –  ‘Six by Nico’ sees Nico and his team create a themed menu every six weeks.

Since opening in April 2017, the restaurant has gone from strength to strength, with waiting lists of up to two months.