Picture this: the main protagonist of a movie walks into a bakery and orders a chocolate brownie. The man at the storefront passes the parcel with the brand logo vividly displayed on the screen. A few seconds of pause before the character grabs the parcel and walks out. The wide-angle shot takes the storefront in the background as the character walks out with a smile.
This could very well be the scene from a bakery commercial or a movie. But what makes it distinct is the branding. You would quickly recognize the brand if it were a Bimbo or a McDonald’s.
So, what do these big brands have that your small bakery business doesn’t? What makes them so catchy and familiar that a scene from a commercial or a movie sticks with you? Let’s simplify the bakery branding tactics you have been skipping or not paying enough attention to.
5 Elements Of Bakery Branding You Cannot Avoid
Put yourself in the customers’s shoes. Why would you go to McDonald’s for Pizza? Why not the other brands? What is it that keeps you coming to a storefront? What is it that makes a particular brand so familiar?
As a small bakery business, it’s really important to be familiar with your target customer. That’s where branding becomes essential, and the best practices for that aren’t difficult to notice if you look a little carefully. But where to look? Well, help has arrived –
Mission Statement
Try scratching your business’ mission statement. When you opened your bakery business or small bakery business, you had certain ideas in mind, a certain purpose outlining why you are starting the business, who your products are for, and your approach to building the business you want to build. Your bakery business mission statement has all the answers you need to start with your branding.
Brand USP
Successful entrepreneurs across industries are filling in the market gap and growing within an oversaturated market. Which gap does your business fill? What do your baked products have that your competitors don’t? Or what are you doing differently? Market your bakery brand’s USP to make it stand out. Work on the Unique Value Proposition of your small bakery business. Once you find answers to all these questions, you’ll know what your brand USP is.
Brand Voice
Your mission statement gave you what your brand is all about. You have formulated your bakery brand’s USP. Now, the next step forward is communication. How you communicate your brand USP to the customer is what shapes your brand’s voice.
Consistency
This is, by far, the most important aspect of your bakery branding. A key characteristic of a brand is to have coherence in its appearance across all mediums of communication. You cannot have one logo, color, or typography on Facebook while marketing completely different colors, fonts, and slogans on Instagram or on your website.
The best part of branding your business is all about making it relevant to your target audience. It’s only possible when you communicate the same brand voice across all social channels. Whether it’s the product packaging, takeout boxes, or a marketing campaign, consider a brand voice that’s consistent across all mediums.
Experiment
Keep experimenting with your brand’s voice and image. No, there’s no need to drastically change the entire outlook. However, you must have a dynamic brand image with room for experimentation.
Bakery Branding Made Easy In 5 Steps
What goes into crafting an actionable bakery branding strategy? We have the answer. You have to follow all the five areas discussed above. But here are some actionable steps you can take to put your thoughts into action –
1. Formulate a Clear Mission Statement
A clear mission statement is the cornerstone of building your bakery brand. It’s the first step toward making that bakery branding strategy work. A mission statement has a clear and concise description of who your brand caters its services to, what it is trying to do, and why your target customer should consider your brand. It’s all about aligning your customers’ needs with your brand’s goal.
While thinking of it may seem easy, writing down a mission statement is not. But if you need help, here are a few questions to help you get started –
- What is your business doing?
- What’s the intention of the business?
- What goal is your brand trying to accomplish?
- How does the brand wish to achieve these goals?
Think about all these questions for a few minutes and come up with answers that suit your brand. These answers will help you separate your brand from your competitors. You can use all these answers to formulate the brand mission statement.
In fact, you’ll also come up with fun and creative bakery branding taglines like –
“Baking your world gluten-free” or “from our oven to your heart.”
You can draw from the list of ingredients your brand uses for baking and add them to your branding strategy. It’s all about aligning what your target customers are looking for with your brand’s value.
2. Bakery Brand Positioning
Here’s the second step that’s as important as the first one. If a mission statement helps you formulate a brand personality for your bakery brand, the brand positioning helps outline who you are not. Through proper brand positioning, a bakery brand can stand out in the market. It’s the way to perfectly communicate the values of your brand to your target customers.
In fact, proper brand positioning helps you understand where your place in the competitive market hierarchy. You are better able to differentiate your brand from the market. Also, it’s easier to develop your pricing strategy and help your brand stand out from the competition.
But how would you stand out? Use the rule of 4 Ps to position your baker brand in the market –
Product: – this part outlines the product you are offering to your customers and the brand experience you are able to provide.
Price: – your pricing strategy determines who your competitors are. It also tells your customers who they should purchase from and why.
Promotion: – how will you market your bakery brand? Are you going for conventional channels? Is word-of-mouth marketing working for you? Or are you following particular social channels to grab the attention of your target customers? Your marketing tactics are also part of your brand positioning if you are to do bakery branding correctly.
Place: – how will you sell your bread and cookies? There are multiple options available, like selling from a truck or a brick-and-mortar store. You can even sell from your own online bakery store.
3. Build Your Brand Voice
Your brand voice is the personality of your brand. It’s what your customers think of your bakery brand and how they see you. Your voice will define the overall brand identity of the website. This voice is expressed from what’s already there in your mission statement, and you express it through visuals, colors, typography, and logo.
Here are some common tones your brand can choose from –
- Friendly
- Trustworthy
- Fun
- Passionate
- Down-to-earth
- Trustworthy
- Enthusiastic
- Positive
- Authoritative
- Eclectic
- Heartfelt
- Sympathetic
4. Build Your Visual Identity
Building your brand’s visual language brings your bakery branding strategy to the execution level. Here, you start thinking about finalizing the brand colors, typography, logo, and other design elements as per your brand voice. It’s a way of visually communicating your brand’s personality that it could through behavior if it were a person.
Do remember that your bakery branding visual strategy is all about building a good first impression. So, the visuals should be well thought out and cohesive in nature.
You should be able to use these visual elements in your product wrappings, signage, menus, packaging, websites, social media, and marketing materials. Do consult with a professional designer to come up with the best potential design.
5. Draft A Brand Book For Your Bakery
Here’s a pro tip: once you have completed all the different elements of your bakery brand, compile them and prepare a brand book to document your branding strategy. Once you have a brand book drafted, it’ll be easier to provide a consistent brand experience throughout the different social channels of your business. Your target customers should be able to interact and communicate with your brand consistently through different mediums.
It’ll only be possible once you follow the same brand vision across different channels. So, do include your brand’s mission statement, brand voice, and visual identity in your brand book to document the entire bakery branding strategy in one place. This will also make the brand strategy accessible across all social channels. In fact, your brand’s identity will be more accessible to your marketing team through a brand book.
10 Bakery Branding Ideas: Learn From The Best
“Visuals are very important for bakery branding” – this is an understatement. In fact, your brand’s visual aspect shapes it as a brand. You need a logo that resonates with your target customers. The right colors and the brand typography make all the difference.
So, how do you find the right visual language for your bakery brand? We did some research and compiled some examples you can take a look at –
1.Antoinette Cake Shop
A wholesome cake brand that sells their products made straight out of home. The designer Matias Funes has crafted this small bakery brand’s visuals with the ‘concept’ of artisan bakery products in mind. The stamp design on the logo and the rough and organic illustration on the bakery package gives it a rustic vibe. The brand voice is sophisticated and wholesome and stands out clearly to the customers.
2.Balloon & Whisk
An act of endearment, generosity, and warmth – Balloon & Whisk resembles these words in all its essence. It’s a cake shop in Jakarta, and the branding of this bakery shop reminds customers more of a gift shop. If you are building a bakery brand for customers who’d love to gift beautifully parceled cookies to someone, you should take inspiration from Balloon & whisk. The brand promotes the sweet act of gifting with a light-hearted and wholesome theme.
3.Croissant
Croissant is a small bakery brand based in Canada. The design for this brand is based on where it is located – a lake. It was an act of bringing the shape of a boat and a croissant together and merging them. The logo itself speaks of the clear and excellent bakery branding tactic this brand has followed here. It’s unique, clear, warm, and beautiful. Croissant keeps the branding simple yet catchy to its target audiences.
4.First Bite
If your bakery branding is for a younger audience, then here’s an inspiration. First Bite has a modern take on its branding. The unique drawings on the packages and the modern serif typography work perfectly. The fun and colorful palette attracts their target customers the most.
5. La Panadería
Here’s the story of a North America-based bakery: Brothers José and David Cáceres started La Panadería in 2014. It is clear in its intentions to position itself in the bakery market as an Artisanal Bakery. The brand color and logo reeks of their brand vision identity.
6.Jordi Morera
Jordi Morera is a bakery brand that’s raising its brand awareness with a simple and minimal brand voice. They are trying to focus on promoting the consumption of healthy bread and other baked goods. The design elements are less distracting and catchy for the audience.
7.Bear Bakery
Some customers are really fond of home-baked cookies, birthday cakes, or croissants. Bear Bakery represents itself as a home bakery owned by a family. Their branding strategy seems to build trust and promise of providing the best quality home-baked products. If you are looking for something that’s there are more people will follow
They are catching their customers’ attention for the slow-fermented bread they sell fresh. The logo and the brand image are clear to communicate their focus on artisanal bakes.
8. Sania
Sania is also a bakery brand with modern brand design language attracting their target audience. The logo resembles the shape of a bread in minimalistic form. The brand voice resonates with Sania, which is a place for big bread production. The design elements are consistent across their business cards, wrapping papers, packaging, and Sania’s website.
9. Flor De Oro
Bread has been a substantial part of the human diet. It’s a daily necessity and one that we cannot live without. Flor De Oro creates a minimal yet catchy visual language that can inspire any small home bakery business. It’s all about speaking about the quality and the freshness of the bread they are baking.
10. Caylo
Say you have a bakery brand catered to the younger audience; then what would be your bakery branding voice? Here’s a bakery branding design style for such brands. Caylo Bakery’s design uses fun typography with the ‘O’ shaped like a donut, making it more catchy. The color palette used in this design also works well for the modern customers of today’s time. The whole design project for this bakery business is quirky and lighthearted. If you are doing something similar for a similar target audience, then you can for this brand voice.
It’s All About ‘Baking The Bakery Business’
Bakery branding strategies should help you shape and create your target customer’s perception of your brand. Your effort should help them identify and be familiar with what your brand represents and stands for. When you do your bakery branding right, you get to not only gain customers but also retain them. It’s difficult to do your bakery branding unless you are following the right branding strategy – just like baking a cake.
However, this article should provide you with helpful insights into building the bakery brand you want to build. Hopefully, you have found the answer you were looking for. Do you have any questions for us? How about putting them in the comment box?
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