Kingston Vybes: How a Brand Story Video Sold Out a Food Business
Reggie Coles cooks soul food island fusion. Jerk, curry, comfort food, all of it made by hand.
When we met him he was setting up at Flat Iron, a bar in downtown Greensboro, getting customers from a small social media following and whatever word of mouth reached the block that night.
The food was already good. Almost nobody knew it existed.
The problem
This is the version of the trust gap that hits small food businesses hardest.
A photo of a plate looks like every other photo of a plate. You cannot taste a jpeg. And a person deciding where to eat on a Friday night is choosing between a dozen options, all of which look fine on a screen.
What Reggie had that none of them had was himself. The way he talks about the food, why he cooks it, what it means to him. That does not fit in a caption.
What we made
The first video was a short promo built around Reggie talking about his food. No script. Just him explaining what he makes and why, cut against footage of him cooking and serving.
We posted it on the Kingston Vybes account and, through a collaboration, on Go Greensboro, a local page with 11,800 followers.
More people started showing up.
The second video covered Smoke Stack Social, a weekly summer event at Revolution Mill. This one added something the first did not have: customers.
Real people, mid meal, saying what they thought. Combined with Reggie's own passion for the food, that gave a stranger two reasons to trust it instead of one.
We cut it horizontal and vertical so it could run everywhere.
Why it worked
We used the thing he already had. Reggie is compelling when he talks about his food. The video did not manufacture that, it just put it somewhere people could see it.
We put customers on camera. Reggie saying the food is good is marketing. A stranger with a full mouth saying it is proof. The second video outperformed the first largely because of that difference.
We used somebody else's audience. A local page with 11,800 followers reaches people who would never have found Kingston Vybes on their own. The video was the thing worth sharing. Distribution did the rest.
It was real. Filmed at the actual events, with actual customers, while the food was actually being served. Nothing staged. That is what a viewer can feel and cannot articulate.
In Reggie's words
We also filmed Reggie talking about the experience of working together, covering the Bearded Goat at Revolution Mill Apartments across August and September.
We make documentary style video for businesses across Greensboro and the Triad. If you have something good that not enough people know about yet. Happy to come to you.