Frigate in Pustozersk hotel & restaurant brand

nenets autonomous okrug

Frigate in Pustozersk
hotel & restaurant brand

How partnership with museum helps HoReCa

Once upon a time in Naryan-Mar, there was a small hotel called Natalie and a restaurant named Frigate. They lived a normal life, and everything was ok. Shift workers came and stay, hunters and fishermen came and stay, and life flew at a calm pace. Restaurant served sushi and pizza, which was ok in Naryan-Mar, surrounded by tundra, hungry for Japanese cuisine.

Client: NAO Business Development Center

Work: branding, design, copywriting

We've started working with the Pustozersk museum and were searching for partners among local entrepreneurs that could handle to promote museum ideas somehow. Katherina, the hotel administrator was keen for new ideas and eager to participate and change everything. Looks like, that was a good idea, after all:

Tl;dr — Frigate in Pustozersk 4 years since the launch looks awesome

Main idea

We took the main feature of the restaurant and made it the core concept — the first fish restaurant in the whole Naryan-Mar, adding local historical cuisine.

The first fish restaurant, that tells stories about Pechora river and people, promotes river tourism with accent on Pustozersk cuisine and its great impact on region history and philosophy

Bye Natalie, Hi Pustozersk

People in Naryan-Mar were too familiar with the title "Frigate" to remove it. Moreover, people usually called both the restaurant and the hotel the same, so we left it. Okay, let it be Frigate, we'll handle it.

Yet we immediately changed Natalie to Pustozersk. The leftovers of Natalie had been wiped out together with the provincial curvative decor in design and the first we got is a clean and geometrical logo.

Igor Makovsky

ART DIRECTOR & DESIGNER

Frigate
1. Historical facts
2. Exploration
3. River tourism
In
1. Local geography
2. Fishing
3. Vanished settlements
Pustozersk
1. Important place in NAO
2. Culture & aesthetics
3. Traditions

Frigate in Pustozersk logo in all its glory

Its dangerous to eat alone, take this!

Interiors

Our task was to guide the architects the Pustozersk way. Mood was set in a very rough sketches pretty quickly, yet process is in step-by-step progress under our close control. It's a matter of nuances and consensus between prices and nice taste design.

Pustozerk cuisine

Our partners from nordic cuisine Björn Moscow restaurant were invited to create special Pustozersk menu, which had to be actualized and adopted to the modern tastes.

Björn

In addition to Italian and Japanese cuisine, unique local dishes have appeared here, tied together with the Pustozersk cousine: historical and modern interpretations of culinary recipes. Local Chefs had been taught to pay attention to local herbs and berries and use them in food. This happened a few times, in 2019 and in 2023.

Staff and communication

It took time to find, dress and learn right people to work in both restaurant and hotel. We asked Pustozersk museum to help with the fashion references and made all the dresses with the help of wonderful Anna Zlotko. Administrator Katerina took the rest.

Pustozersk fashion illustration, based on museum archives

We've insisted on photo session for all the hotel and restaurant staff in tundra, to have a suitable realistic set of images for marketing and social network needs. All the emplyees got their new look and feel, that helped them to dive deeper into the Pustozersk feeling of minimalism and culture.

Hotel and restuarant personnel in front of horizon in tundra

That's how we got our personal and unique tone-of-voice and communication, where main heroes appeared to be the real restaurant staff you meet around. That's important for motivating staff that became deep integrated into the life and brand of the place.

Communicating in social networks

Avatars for personnel accounts

Wanna look at menu or ready to order?

Menu looks delicious with lots of photos, that we made during the photoset with Vitaly Martynov. Additional comments here and there add interesting details and just catch the eye. We use communication via illustrations and real people. One of them could even serve you the menu itself.

Also take a look at the bar and the lunch menus. They're more casual, yet have clean design because it is important that the staff update it on regular basis without asking professional typesetting help.

Pechora river map

One of the most important elements that we use is the Pechora river map, that is impressively beautiful if you just look at it. It was hand-drawn by hand and has all the settlements — both present and vanished — presented on it. Not only this map makes all the design aesthetic when printed on, it also serves as a communication instrument.

Pechora river map

Idea was to use the map for packaging products, like berries, jam or marmelade, and show the place on the map, where the product had been picked up or produced.

Boxes with marmelade use stickers with stories and maps, where the berries had been picked up

Mural

There was a technician unattractive building nearby, that had white brick wall craving for a nice mural work. That's what we did, making the best of it.

Mural both points to the restaurant entrance in case you've missed it and looks awesome

Results

Restaurant is one of the most revealed visible partners who changed upon using the new brand in NAO. Hotel Pustozersk catches up and have plans to brand all the rooms accordingly to the settlements across the Pechora river and old arctic maps as main design element.

Upon being more open towards changing and tourist orientation, our hotel and restaurant got roughly up to 20% more revenue. We have broaden up the menu, got many ideas for new renovating and merch. We got a permanent partner among NAO Museum Association that invited many guests and ordered special dinners at our place. Most difficult was learning personnel service, that is tough in a small regional town, like ours. All in all, we got a long awaited level-up.