King’s Hawaiian: Bringing the New Brand Look to Life Through Recipe and Lifestyle Content
Client: King’s Hawaiian - Food Service
Partnership: One-time rebrand content project (May 2025) for King’s Hawaiian’s Foodservice division
Goal: Update outdated visuals so they matched the brand’s new look and feel, with content that felt more lively, colorful, vibrant, and human.
What we made: Updated photos for over 40 recipes along with lifestyle photos
Where it was used: King’s Hawaiian Foodservice website, social media, along with sales presentations and print collateral
Highlights: Large-scale production with full creative crew, 2 location lifestyle photoshoots, 5-day recipe photoshoot, and remote live image review with client located in the East Coast during production
Value: I led the project from creative direction through delivery, including shot planning, location scouting, team coordination, client alignment, model direction, and post-production communication, so the final content matched the rebrand and worked across multiple channels.
The Challenge
King's Hawaiian was in the middle of a rebrand and needed visuals that matched where the brand was going.
Their existing images no longer fit the new direction. The updated look was more lively, colorful, and vibrant, and the Foodservice content needed to reflect that shift.
This was also a complex production. Recipe photography and lifestyle content. Multiple shoot days. A large crew. Multiple locations. The challenge wasn't just making strong images. It was keeping everything cohesive so the final library felt like one unified body of work.
What We Did
Sean led the project as both photographer and creative director, with a focus on building a content library that felt consistent, modern, and ready to use across web, social, and sales materials.
The project broke into two content buckets:
Recipe Photography A 5-day studio shoot producing 42 final horizontal images, one per recipe, built for consistency across the Foodservice site.
Lifestyle Photography A 2-day shoot across two locations, with content built around two real-world scenarios:
College students enjoying dishes made with King's Hawaiian recipes
Foodservice professionals preparing dishes in an industrial-style kitchen
We delivered 41 final lifestyle images (27 college, 14 foodservice) in both vertical and horizontal formats, giving their team flexibility for web and social placements.
Total deliverables: 83 final images across two content types, two locations, and seven shoot days.
How we worked together
Strong planning made this production work.
Before the shoot, Sean worked with the King's Hawaiian team to align on visual direction and make sure the mood board reflected the new brand style. He also coordinated with the food stylist on recipe scheduling, ingredients, and product planning across all shoot days.
All project details lived in a shared Notion portal, including the mood board, shot list, recipe planning notes, and key references. The client could review and update information directly, and the full crew worked from the same source throughout production.
Since the King's Hawaiian team was based on the East Coast and couldn't attend in person, remote review was built into the workflow from day one. As images came in on set, the client could view them through a live remote album and share feedback in real time. Adjustments happened during the shoot, not after.
Sean also managed post-production communication, relaying edit notes to the photo editor and making sure final files were delivered in the formats the client needed.
Final content was delivered within two weeks of the last shoot day.
What this unlocked for King’s Hawaiian
King's Hawaiian walked away with a refreshed content library that matched the energy of their rebrand.
The new visuals supported the launch of an updated Foodservice page with imagery that felt more current, more human, and more aligned with the direction the brand was heading.
Their team also gained a flexible asset library built for multiple placements:
Website
Social media
Sales presentations
Print collateral
Beyond the images, this project showed what a large-scale production can look like when the planning is done right. A shared portal, a clear pre-production process, and remote review built into the workflow kept a multi-day, multi-location shoot moving without losing alignment.
The client shared positive feedback on the final content, which reflected how well the visuals landed against the new brand direction.
