When a major chain decides to stop speaking to everyone the same way.

My role: Senior Copywriter. I wrote the concept, the territory narrative and the copy across all the assets.

Kroger had a problem that many big brands have and few admit: they wanted to genuinely connect with the Latino consumer without putting a sombrero or a mustache on their products in the United States. Their shelves kept speaking a language built for the American market, all very generic, nothing that felt like their own. Nothing that smelled or tasted like home.

That’s where the question was born that drives every worthwhile project: what if, instead of translating, we created the experience?

The answer was to create Kroger Mercado. A concept brand inspired by traditional Latin American markets, those places full of color, noise, and human warmth where shopping is never just a transaction. We took that energy and turned it into a visual system: geometric patterns that recall ancestral ruins, a palette that shouts tropics, a typeface with personality that doesn’t ask anyone’s permission.

And to prove the concept wasn’t just “pretty and done,” we brought it down to a real product: Crisp Apple Soda, the first soda in a line designed to taste like tradition: apple, watermelon, mango, pineapple-guava. Every can, a flag. Every flavor, a trip back to childhood that shouts “this really represents me.”

The result is a brand that understands that designing for the Latino consumer isn’t about putting a sombrero or a mustache on a logo, it’s about understanding their culture, respecting it, and giving it back to them with pride in a product that looks, feels, and sells differently.

This is what happens when the heart, mind, and wallet work in alignment. This is Kroger Mercado.