Turning a world-class product into a brand chefs ask for by name

Truffles already come with premium built in. They’re rare, seasonal and expensive. Below&Above didn’t need to convince the market that truffles were valuable. It needed the market to understand why its truffles were.

That becomes harder when a product moves through distributors, kitchens, menus and supply chains. The closer it gets to the plate, the easier it is for the producer behind it to disappear.

And when chefs don’t know whose product they’re using, they can’t ask for it by name.

That was the commercial problem beneath the marketing problem. A world-class product was at risk of competing like a commodity because the market couldn’t always recognise whose quality it was.

Premium quality can’t simply be claimed. It has to become recognisable.

Plenty of producers can talk about provenance, craftsmanship and exceptional quality. Those words alone don’t create authority. The strongest premium ingredient brands build the signals, relationships and proof that allow the market to reach that conclusion for itself.

For Below&Above, chefs were particularly important. They weren’t simply customers. They were credible judges of the product. When respected chefs recognise a producer, use the name and start asking for it specifically, that recognition has value well beyond the kitchen.

The strategic opportunity was therefore bigger than awareness. It was to make Below&Above itself part of the value of the truffle.

Because the name chefs ask for is considerably harder to substitute.

Hum was brought in to turn a strong producer into a more visible authority brand.

We worked through the commercial model around the product: the category, distribution, chef relationships, provenance, the producer story and the way premium food brands earn recognition over time.

The task wasn’t to manufacture a premium story. Below&Above already had one. It was to make the quality and difference already inside the business easier for the market to see, understand and value.

The strategy shifted Below&Above from simply being a premium truffle producer towards becoming a recognised authority within the category.

That meant creating a clearer position around the name, a stronger language for quality and a more deliberate role for chef-led recognition and seasonal demand.

The brand needed to become more exact, not simply louder. More recognisable. More ownable. More capable of carrying its provenance and reputation with the product as it moved from producer to distributor to kitchen.

If the product is exceptional, the market should be able to recognise whose it is.

The strategy also gave the brand a simple creative expression:

The immediate change was clarity.

Below&Above had always understood that its product was different. The strategy gave the team a much stronger way to explain why that difference mattered commercially, and a clearer structure for how the brand, chef relationships, distribution and reputation could work together.

That thinking began moving straight into conversations with chefs, distributors and the wider market.

Most importantly, the brand now has a clearer path to make the name travel with the product. From grove to pass to plate.