FRITES
- May 22
- 2 min read
Updated: May 26
BRANDING | MARKETING | VIDEO PRODUCTION
Four locations. No brand. No voice. No strategy. Five years later, eight locations and a franchise-ready identity. Here’s how it happened.
The brand
Frites was a Hong Kong restaurant group with something genuine — four locations, real food, loyal regulars. But online, it was invisible. 1,900 Instagram followers. 30 website visitors a month. No brand voice, no visual identity, no strategy. A business that had earned its following in person and hadn’t yet figured out how to translate that into something that could grow.
The brief
Not just to build a social presence. To build a brand — from the foundation up — that could carry a growing group through expansion, through events, through a pandemic, and eventually toward franchise. One that could hold its shape no matter how big it got.
The work
It started with identity. Brand voice, visual language, the way Frites spoke and what it stood for. Everything built from scratch, because there was nothing to work with.
From that foundation, five years of work followed.
Campaigns ran across Meta, Instagram, Google, and YouTube. Content was directed and produced — menu shoots, event coverage, campaign videos. Each of the four new restaurant openings got a full launch: campaign, design, video. Influencer partnerships were brought in and the internal team trained to manage them without losing quality or control.
The business was digitised — online menus, in-venue digital screens, booking platforms, loyalty programmes. AI tools and workflow systems were introduced. The company was audited and restructured for how modern hospitality actually operates.
When COVID hit, the brand held. Delivery campaigns, takeaway content, a social presence that kept people connected when the doors were closed. The audience didn’t shrink — it stayed.
The two biggest annual events were built from nothing. Oktoberfest launched for the first time and became one of the year’s most successful nights. Pride was a full production — invites, advertising, merchandise, art direction — and became a defining moment for what Frites stood for in the city.
When expansion beyond Hong Kong came into focus, the full creative and strategic direction for that next chapter was developed. A body of work that went on to shape where the brand moved next.
Lon led design and art direction throughout. Matt led content production. Strategy, creative, and execution moved as one.
Where they are now
8 locations. 15,000 Instagram followers. 30,000 website users a month.
A brand that had nothing now has an identity, an infrastructure, and an audience strong enough to scale. By the time the engagement ended, franchise readiness wasn’t a question of if — it was a question of when.
