Bimbo has supplied buns to millions of street food vendors across Mexico for more than 78 years – the success of these small businesses directly impacts the bakery’s bottom line. While these carts, shops, and stalls serve incredible food, they largely lack the media and resources to compete with big fast food chains. With 800 Burger King, KFC, and similar franchises encroaching on the independent street food economy, we refocused the spotlight on more than 8,000 of Bimbo’s clients. We unlocked the power of big tech for small business, and put Mexico’s most creative hotdogs and hamburgers on the map.

A MARKET GONE STALE

In 2019, seven out of 10 hamburgers and nine out of 10 hotdogs consumed in Mexico were made with Bimbo buns. In the same year, street food vendors (dubbed “Special Channels”) represented 33% of the company’s total sales. But between 2020 and 2021, as eating patterns shifted through COVID and beyond, and with competition from Big Fast Food as fierce as ever, that percentage fell by 8% – resulting in an annual deficit of $192M USD for the company.

BRIEF: HELP BIMBO CUSTOMERS SELL MORE STREET FOOD

How could Bimbo support its commercial allies’ recovery from the economic downturn and increase sales, while creating and strengthening brand awareness among both food vendors and end consumers alike?

OBJECTIVES

1. Increase visibility and drive traffic to street food carts, shops, and stalls across Mexico.

2. Recover 10% of sales participation in Special Channels.

THE GREATEST GUIDE

The world’s first fully-generative search and signage system designed to put 8,402 of Mexico’s most creative hamburger and hotdog stands on foodies’ map.

CREATIVE FOOD DESERVES CREATIVE DATA

From octopus to grasshopper, the creativity of Mexico’s local street food is staggering. Our data collection and application of it to mapping and generative AI reflects the variance and creativity of the food, while respecting a rich, traditional visual language. The food isn’t generic – neither is our technology solution. We created a world-first workflow designed to turn data into prompts and prompts into food paintings, all are masked and combined with generative backgrounds. Dynamically typeset from hand-painted fonts, automatically retouched and branded, then ingested into our system as separate layers, the final point-of-sale materials for Bimbo’s small business customers were combined, up-resized, and output to final specs, that they received via WhatsApp ready to print.

KNOWN DATA, NOVEL PURPOSE

We started by collecting data from thousands of street food vendors across Mexico, both directly, and using the IVY and RTM data management tools created by Bimbo’s business analysis center. That data had previously only been used for placing purchase orders for buns.

AUDIENCE

Mexican street food vendors – Bimbo’s clients – who it supplies with hotdog and hamburger buns. And anyone who enjoys creative street food.

NAVIGATING INVISIBLE WALLS

The commercial application of generative AI at scale is challenging; throughout development, we discovered invisible walls everywhere. For example, generative platforms are likely to render burgers that look like BigMacs, suggesting heavy bias in their training data. Because the street food on our menu doesn’t look like ubiquitous fast food, and often uses ingredients not well documented on the Internet, we had to push at the edges of what AI could actually render, through rules-based decisioning.

AUTOMATED ART DIRECTION

To produce 8,402 data-driven point-of-sale posters we combined Mexico’s rich tradition of sign painting with the scale and efficiency of artificial intelligence – we cooked up an iterative workflow between human art directors and our AI models. Rather than bespoke art direction, our approach was rules-based (e.g., the rule of thirds), which we rolled up into a programmatic creative system. For example, our automated drop shadow had to work for both long, wide hotdogs, and narrow, high hamburgers. So: if x width, then y shadow.

THE NOT-SO-SECRET SAUCE

To drive word on the street, we turned to earned television and radio coverage, foodie influencers, social media, and digital ads to get people exploring local food vendors via the Google Maps API-powered website.

SCALE

National, with 8,402 food vendors served across Mexico’s 31 states.

SMALL BUSINESS IMPACT

• +12,200,000 impressions across Mexico

• +77,000 online map engagements to date

• 42,010 unique point-of-sale images generated for Bimbo’s food vendor customers

• +23% increase in sales among Bimbo’s “Special Channels” compared to the 10% target (+120%)

• Set Bimbo’s new +180% week-over-week nationwide sales record

STREET CRED

By putting 8,402 of Bimbo’s customers on an online map accessible to all, we not only directly promoted their businesses' own marketing and long-term brand health, we also significantly increased immediate sales. The campaign strengthened commercial relationships, including the trust and loyalty that Bimbo has cultivated with some individual food vendors for over 40 years. Perhaps the most rewarding impact: dozens of business owners reached back out to Bimbo representatives to personally thank the bakery brand for its support.

SMALL BUSINESS, BIG IMPORTANCE

In Mexico, a country of more than 123M people, the informal food sector is an integral part of the economy and culture. According to INEGI, more than 2.5M people are involved in informal commerce, including selling food on the streets. This sector represents approximately 30% of the country’s GDP and generates indirect employment through a sustainable business model, contributing significantly to the national economy.

HERITAGE & GRAPHIC DESIGN

The visual culture of Mexico’s hand-painted signs has endured over generations and across regions, playing a critical role in helping small businesses promote themselves. When using technology to create marketing materials for our partners, we let tradition dictate – we used the same graphic codes that jocheros and hamburgueseros already know and feel comfortable using to give thousands of stands and locations their unique visual identity.