What's in a Brand?

How much thought do you give to a brand name?

I suppose it might depend on how familiar you already are with it. Whilst everyday brands just float by and you hardly notice them, some brands may raise an eyebrow or make you think 'Ooh! That's new!'

But brands develop over time and take on implicit meaning and values that are simply accepted as truth - until something happens to upset this perception.

When Bonnie and I started the company the first task was to decide on a name and what values we were to associate with it. We were guided by existing requests to address food allergens, gluten and wheat inparticular, but we also decided that we wanted to create 'clean label' recipes. This meant no artificial ingredients and, where possible, not even any E numbers.

We chose our surname as the brnad as we didn't want to burden the products with a cheesy or gimmicky name that would eventually wear thin. We wanted something long-standing that wasn't restricted to only one style of Oriental cuisine.

So Yau's was born, and our company name, Bonnie Yau's Food Products, acknowledges my wife's importance to it.

But that was just the beginning.

Everything we do now has to be guided by the values of the brand and although we have taken on complementary products and worked towards making our sauces vegan too, they will always be gluten free and all natural, avoiding the use of ultra-processed ingredients.

In a future blog I will go into more depth about the look of the brand and how it has changed.