Like many iconic brands, KITKAT wanted to evolve what their brand means to consumers and connect it with a whole new audience. When looking at their product and brand, one of their biggest challenges is to show everyone that it is much more than just a classic candy bar, to demonstrate that every single KITKAT is made with real ingredients, and real craft, and real care. The other challenge is that chocolate bars – and breaks – mean many different things to different people. And now, when looking beyond the brand and into the world, the biggest challenge was that the current retail experience surrounding the way we purchase chocolate bars is generic, archaic and static, the exact opposite of the younger audience KITKAT was aiming to connect with.

The big idea ended up being not to evolve the brand/bar that is found within the retail experience, but to evolve the retail experience that sits around the brand. In other words, our idea was to change the way people buy chocolate bars. To do that we looked at the way people traditionally buy KITKAT bars, we looked at the iconic brand itself, and finally we looked at the desired target audience (Gen Z & Millennials who live in major cities). From there, we set out to design a whole new way to have a break. And the result was a completely redesigned KITKAT Chocolatory, featuring an entirely original retail experience from the products, packaging, and people, right down to the branding, business model, and the very way people buy their bars. All set up at the most successful mall in North America.

The entire Chocolatory was anchored around the first ever KITKAT Chef’s Table, where customers could book a session with a trained Chocolatier to create their very own one-of-a-kind KITKAT bar. Well, technically, they could create over 1,500 different bars. The Chef’s Table experience was central to the store design, acting as a beacon in the mall and store, drawing passing customers into the story. The rest of the store was designed to compliment this commitment to craft, quality, and customization, taking customers about as far away as possible from the experience of purchasing a chocolate bar in a convienence store or gas station. Beyond the space, we also designed the actual product offerings and the packaging, the merchandise and the e-commerce platform, the back-end service and the overall customer experience, mapping flows from a multitude of touchpoint all the way to the Chef’s Table or cashier and beyond.

After 4 months of being open, Covid-19 hit and the world had a break. Sadly, Toronto is still enduring a lockdown (the world’s longest) so it’s hard to fully gauge the success, but, up until that point the store regularly saw extended line-ups to purchase (again, something that was good/special pre-pandemic), often extending down the hallway of the mall. And, more importantly, the Chef’s Table experience was fully booked for the first 4 months. In addition, the launch alone garnered 20.6 million earned media impressions plus 14.4 million organic social impressions. Furthermore, the store got some great reviews on Yelp! and KITKAT is now looking to roll out this approach to experience design on a global scale.