CHAMA MAMA
A taste of Georgia, built to last
Chama Mama is a Georgian restaurant group in New York, serving classic Georgian cuisine with a modern spin across its Chelsea and Upper West Side dining rooms. Founded by a Georgian immigrant, the brand is built on three pillars of the cuisine: the Tone clay oven where bread bakes fresh each morning, khachapuri, Georgia's famous cheese-filled bread, and the Qvevri, the egg-shaped clay vessel used to make and age natural Georgian wines.
With new locations on the horizon and franchise ambitions ahead, Chama Mama came to Ruckus to define and refine an identity that could scale without losing its accent, from brand workshop through visual identity, color and typography, and illustration, to a master brand guide.
One voice, many rooms
New dining rooms were on the way and franchising was the goal, so the identity had to hold up as the footprint grew well beyond the first two locations. Every location, designer, and touchpoint needed to look and sound like the same Chama Mama, so the brand communicated its values before a single word was read. And the work had to honor an ancient culture, from the Mkhedruli alphabet to the Supra feast, and carry it forward rather than flatten it.
A wordmark that echoes Mkhedruli
Ruckus opened with a brand workshop to capture what Chama Mama already stood for, its history, values, and rituals: hospitality, quality, authenticity, and diversity. In Georgian, chama means to eat and mama means father, while the world hears the universal warmth of mama. The custom letterforms echo Mkhedruli, the curvy Georgian script UNESCO lists as intangible cultural heritage, and submarks pull shapes from the wordmark, plus a container inspired by the Qvevri, so the brand has a favicon and social mark that work where the full logo cannot.
The palette is poured from the table and the terrain: the Black Sea blue of Batumi, clay from the Tone, the plum-sauce green of Tkemali, and the cream of fresh-baked bread, each set with its Pantone and hex value for consistency across every location. Two typefaces carry the whole system, a warm geometric sans for display and a global serif for reading.
A library drawn by hand
An illustration system gives the brand its personality: a minimal, sketchy primary style that catalogs Georgia in single pen strokes, from khinkali and adjaruli to the chonguri and the toasting horn, and a richer charcoal secondary style that powers the 100 Facts about Georgia poster series, queens and poets, saints and painters, each set against a bold block of the extended palette.
The system carries the culture through the room and out the door. Dancers and toastmasters front the to-go menu, a kraft packaging line stamps khachapuri boxes, holiday wrap, and spice pouches with single drawings from the library, and totes and tees carry the brand home.
A brand built to travel
Everything shipped defined and refined in a single master brand guide, eight systems in one book, from logo construction and color to illustration, iconography, and photography, so any designer in any location can create as Chama Mama. With vision, mission, tone of voice, and campaign slogans like From Tone to Table, every room speaks with the same Georgian accent as Chama Mama opens its next doors.
