Building America’s Global Food Expert.
Lipari Masterbrand
How a regional food distributor became the definitive leader in global and specialty food.
Project Details
Client: Lipari Foods
Category: Food Distribution
Location: United States
Scope: Insights, Strategy, Brand, ActivationSituation
Lipari Foods knows where the world’s best food is hiding. For over 60 years, out of Warren, Michigan, they’ve been sourcing and distributing perimeter-of-store food across 32+ states: supermarkets, convenience stores, hospitals, college campuses, and more. Their roots run deep in deli, bakery, and specialty grocery, with a growing edge in international and global cuisines. Nobody found great food like Lipari did.
Then everything changed at once. Private equity ownership, a new CEO, and a food landscape rapidly shifting toward global flavours, the fastest growing segment in the market, all converged. Retailers needed a partner who could lead that shift.
Discovery
We ran consumer and retail customer research simultaneously, understanding the market from the top down and the bottom up. Both streams told the same story.
On the consumer side, American attitudes toward international food were splitting between authentic global flavours and Americanized versions of them. The authentic side was growing fastest, driven by shoppers seeking food that honoured its heritage or opened the door to cuisines they had never tried.
On the retail side, five mindset segments emerged spanning Lipari’s core and growth channels, from ethnic markets to national chains and everything in between. We prioritized the Passionate Collaborator: a retailer who wants consultation, curation, and a partner built to grow their business. Financially attractive, deeply loyal, and consistently underserved by the market.
The whitespace went beyond product. It was a combination of the world’s best global and specialty assortment, delivered through genuine partnership and service.
Shift
The strategy came down to a powerful shift.
FROM: A Broadliner with Special Capabilities → TO: The Global Food Experts
The path was clear: own the Category of One as America’s definitive Global Food Expert and the most qualified partner on earth to find great food and bring it to market. From that single reframe, everything followed. Every product decision, retail service, customer touch point, and piece of communication now had a clear answer to who Lipari is and why that matters, not only to Lipari’s customers, but to the shoppers they serve.
Build
Deep immersion into Lipari’s world began: Food show attendance, sales ride-alongs, and 360-degree stakeholder interviews gave us a ground-level read on the culture, customer relationships, and leadership dynamics.
The brand belief came first, built directly from the brand’s rich DNA: At Lipari, we believe great food deserves to be discovered.
Three layers of meaning in one sentence: 60 years of sourcing expertise, service-forward relationships, and permission to keep finding and bringing great food to market. Everything else built from it.
The competitive strategy followed: whitespace analysis, territory exploration, and a prioritization framework gave leadership a clear, defensible path to owning the global and specialty perimeter. A Brand Manifesto and Strategy Narrative built organizational alignment from the boardroom to the warehouse to the stores.
Then, a full-scale reinvention at unmatched speed launched. This included: A complete brand identity redesign. An internal masterbrand launch. A Cultural Ignition program. A new digital platform for the sales force. Passport to Flavor, a globally repositioned Food Show. Repositioning and redesigns across the entire owned brand portfolio. The Forkcast, a proprietary trends and insights publication for retail partners. A new website, external communications, and a Retail Services Proposition built to help Lipari’s customers succeed, from insight to execution. One partner. One transformed business. All of it delivered within a year, faster than anyone thought possible.
Read our case study for Lipari’s Owned Brands.
1. Turned an operational distributor into a category leader with a distinct point of view.
A strategy you can see from a mile away.
We turned Lipari’s north star strategy, The Global Food Experts, into an identity that lives on every surface of the business. Trucks, trade materials, and a new digital platform all speak with one voice: confident, globally inspired and category-defining.
2. Mobilized brand, culture, sales, and customer experience behind a clear strategic shift.
One strategy. Every function. Under twelve months.
We rewired Lipari to show up as The Global Food Experts, everywhere. The Brand Manifesto and Cultural Ignition program moved the organization as one. Passport to Flavor turned the annual food show into a global stage. Sales tools and external communications made sure every conversation, in every channel, landed the same message, and now the whole business proves it.
3. Turned Lipari’s expertise into a competitive growth platform for its retailers.
Proprietary tools that gave retailers a real edge.
The Forkcast, Lipari’s proprietary trends and insights publication, gave retail partners intelligence nobody else in the category was offering. The Lipari Compass app brought that intelligence directly to the sales floor. Together, they turned Lipari’s 60 years of sourcing knowledge into a competitive advantage retailers could use every day.
Engagement Leads
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