Multiply your sales and increase your brand's recognition with Bakery Boxes |
Posted: February 18, 2020 |
Packaging serves three functions; Protection, preservation and promotion and when it comes to food items, the box must serve all these purposes. Especially preservation and protection. On my 26th birthday, we ordered a custom cake from an online facebook page. It was a plain white 2-tier cake with butterflies on the top layer. The business was owned by a girl, and a guy in a Prius came to deliver it. Cake came in a plain white box, one look at it and I knew something was off. My sister received the cake and when we opened it….my birthday was ruined. Inside the box, was a scene straight out of a Stephen King novel, more Gruesome than Franz Kafka’s portrayal of Gregor Samsa in “The Metamorphosis”. That cake was a nightmare fuel to haunt our memory for life. It smelled of death (well technically of the corrugated box it came in) I call that cake the leaning tower of dead hopes and dreams. The butterflies were all squashed; their soulless bodies were all mushed with the box, they looked like butterfly zombies. We had to rush to a near bakery to get a regular caramel chocolate cake. The custom cake we ordered tasted fine but the cheap quality of box completely ruined the cake. This fiasco could have easily been avoided if the girl would have used a better, sturdy, laminated cardboard box with butter paper on the bottom. There was no issue with the taste or her baking, it was the box that messed everything up. She lost a customer and earned a real salty review on yelp. Custom Vs Stock Packaging:The point of mentioning this incident here is to highlight the importance of custom cake boxes for bakery startups or smaller baking businesses. Most bakeries opt for stock packaging instead of getting custom boxes. if you’re not aware of stock packaging, it is readymade, generic packaging that you can slap your name/label on and good to go. These type of boxes sure save you a couple of bucks in regards of packaging but may cost you credibility of your business in long run. Stock packaging feels cheap, doesn’t help with generating brand identity and creates no emotional connection with the customer. Revival of Krispy Kreme is a classic example of how crucial custom packaging can be in success of a business. Ever since going public in 2001, the company expanded like anything for a couple of years then problems of management and failed expansion on a national scale, 2009 lawsuit and other controversies caused a major decline in the sales, to the point where it feared bankruptcy. Then in 2010 Krispy Kreme’s new management came up with a revised business model. Custom packaging design was a pivotal part of this model. The key strategies used were:
This strategy was so successful it helped the company enhance and grow its presence and completely revive itself. Today Krispy Kreme says high guest experience levels and innovative custom packaging are two of the key strategies of their business. When you look at a Krispy Kreme box, you immediately know the product inside is going to be tasty af. Half of this impact is thanks to brand identity that packaging design has created for the Krispy Kreme products. Custom packaging is a long process that requires significant time and money, but payoff at the end is worth going through all the hassle. All the successful bakery business have one key component common i.e. Custom packaging. You will not see them using generic or readymade boxes. All the boxes are tailored to fit the products, be it a cake, a donut or a pie. It feels like the boxes are built around the products, no wobbling. Shape and size is one thing, quality of material used and strength of the box are two other main factors that affect bakery boxes. Corrugated boxes, when not laminated properly, can cause the food to smell like the box, whole quality of food can be ruined if you try to save some money by avoiding laminating the box or don’t use butter papers at the bottom. Grease soaking paper or butter paper holds the food in place and keeps it fresh for longer. If the size is too big or too small the appearance of the product will be ruined. If the box is not sturdy enough the fragile items like cake with be squashed. Credibility of Business:It won’t even matter how great your products are if you use cheap packaging that constantly ruin the quality of the food. A customer will not go back to a bakery that sold him/her a cake shaped like lasagna (even if it tasted yummy). There are three senses by which we perceive the taste of food, sight, smell and taste. If the food doesn’t smell or look good chances are we will not like it. Packaging is an important part of credibility of your bakery business. Innovation and Sustainability:All the major bakery food chains are upping their packaging game to stay in business. Starbucks’s sustainable cups are a recent example of innovation in custom packaging. Dunkin Donuts also changed their packaging in 2019, introducing new colorful and sustainable packaging that they claim “narrates story and heritage of their brand”. Conclusion:Packaging is probably the important part of any business after the quality of the product. It’s what compels a consumer to buy your product and keeps them hooked. Just like innovation in flavors, constant innovation in custom packaging is vital for success of a bakery business as it keeps the customers intrigued and interested.
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