Crown Jewel Beverages
Discipline: Brand Identity · Packaging · Campaign · Digital Design
The Challenge
Every Caribbean household knows sorrel. Brewed from the hibiscus flower, it's the drink of celebration — poured at Christmas, passed hand to hand at gatherings, steeped in generations of tradition. Crown Jewel Beverages, a Brooklyn company co-founded by our own Creative Director, Calvin Lyte, set out to bottle that heritage for a new audience: an original Caribbean sorrel recipe, made for the health-conscious shopper. The challenge was daunting. The health-beverage aisle was oversaturated, crowded with brands shouting the same promises — and sorrel itself was a stranger to the mass market, its main ingredient overlooked by competitors who didn't understand its power.
Our Approach
We didn't hide the flower. We crowned it. Where others buried their ingredients, we made the hibiscus the hero — a symbol of longevity, health, and the warmth of the tropics, placed front and center. A large, centered logo championed the flower, while a clear bottle let the product speak for itself: simple ingredients, clean taste, nothing to hide. With Calvin's dual perspective as both founder and designer, every choice worked to do two things at once — stand out on a crowded shelf, and teach a new market to fall in love with a drink our culture has cherished for generations.
The Result
Crown Jewel turned an unfamiliar flower into a shelf-stopping brand. At its height, the beverage could be found in 16 supermarkets and on Amazon Fresh — carrying a piece of Caribbean tradition into homes far beyond the diaspora. More than packaging, it was proof of concept for everything Paper Plus Rocket believes: that leading with culture isn't just good storytelling, it's good business — and that the richest ideas often come from the traditions we already hold dear.
