Launch a food brand
You’ve got the product. Let’s build the brand around it.
You’ll need more than an awesome product
Turning a great food or drink product into a successful brand takes more than a logo and some packaging.
You need to understand where the product fits, who it’s for, why they’ll choose it and how you’re going to make it stand out in a crowded market.
Then you need to turn that thinking into something people can recognise, understand and buy.
We help ambitious founders do exactly that.
From strategy and naming to identity, packaging, websites and launch creative, Toast can help take your product from idea to market.
Talk to us about your launch
Starting a food brand is complicated
There are a lot of decisions to make.
- What’s the brand called?
- Who are you actually targeting?
- What’s your point of difference?
- What should the product cost?
- What does the competition look like?
- How should you position it?
- What needs to go on the packaging?
- What will retailers expect?
- Do you need a website?
- Should you sell direct?
- What do you actually need to spend money on now?
- And what can wait?
We’ve worked with food and drink startups for decades.
Our job isn’t simply to design what you ask us to design.
We’ll help you work out what you actually need to get the brand launched properly.
Start with the right foundations
Before we design anything, let’s understand what you’re building.
Good branding starts with good decisions.
We’ll work with you to understand the product, market, audience, competitors and commercial ambition behind the business.
Depending on how far you’ve already got, that might include:
- Market and competitor review
- Audience definition
- Brand positioning
- Proposition development
- Brand personality
- Product and range architecture
- Naming
- Brand story
You might already have some of this nailed down.
Great.
We don’t charge you to rediscover things you already know.
We’ll identify the gaps and concentrate our work where it adds value.
Give it a name
A good name can give a new brand an enormous head start.
It needs to be memorable, appropriate and distinctive, but it also needs to work practically across packaging, digital and future products.
If you don’t already have the right name, we can help develop one as part of the branding process.
Build the identity
Turn the idea into something people recognise.
Once we understand what the brand needs to stand for, we start creating how it looks, feels and communicates.
That can include:
- Logo and marque
- Typography
- Colour
- Graphic language
- Illustration
- Photography direction
- Tone of voice
- Messaging
- Brand guidelines
The objective isn’t simply to create something that looks good.
It’s to create an identity capable of becoming a recognisable food or drink brand.
Create packaging that can compete
This is where your customers meet the brand.
For many new food businesses, packaging is the single most important piece of marketing they’ll create.
It needs to communicate quickly, differentiate the product and make people want to pick it up.
But it also needs to work practically.
Ingredients. Nutrition. Claims. Barcodes. Pack formats. Print. Production. Retail requirements.
We’ll bring the brand and packaging together so that creative ambition and commercial reality are considered at the same time.
And we’ll think beyond product number one.
If you’re planning additional flavours, sizes or ranges, we’ll design a system capable of growing with you.
Explore more before you spend more
AI-assisted creative development.
Launching a brand involves making decisions before you’ve seen the finished product in the real world.
Modern creative tools give us new ways to explore those decisions.
We use AI where appropriate during ideation and development to investigate visual territories, develop concepts, explore imagery and visualise possibilities more quickly.
That means we can explore and discard ideas earlier, before significant budget is committed to photography, illustration, prototyping or production.
The creative decisions still come from our designers.
AI simply helps us investigate more possibilities efficiently.
For a startup where every pound matters, that’s important.
More exploration. Faster iteration. Better use of your launch budget.
See how the brand comes together
A brand isn’t a logo in isolation.
During development we’ll consider how the identity starts working across the applications that matter.
That might include packaging, a website, social content, sales presentations, launch materials or retailer communications.
Seeing the brand in context makes it much easier to judge whether the idea is strong enough to go further.
Build your online presence
Give customers, buyers and investors somewhere to find you.
When somebody hears about your product, there’s a good chance they’ll look you up.
Your website helps establish credibility, tell the story, showcase the products and give people somewhere to engage with the brand.
For some businesses, that includes ecommerce.
For others, the priority is presenting the brand, supporting retailer relationships and helping customers find where products are stocked.
Our in-house digital team designs and develops bespoke WordPress websites, so your online presence can be developed alongside the wider brand.
Get ready to sell
Depending on your route to market, you may also need creative support beyond the packaging.
That might include:
- Buyer presentations
- Sales materials
- Product sheets
- Trade show creative
- Launch campaigns
- Social assets
- Photography and imagery
- Retail materials
- Digital campaigns
We can create the things you need now without making you pay for a giant launch toolkit you might never use.
What does it cost to launch a food brand?
It depends on where you’re starting and where you’re trying to get to.
There’s a huge difference between someone testing a product at local markets and a funded startup preparing to pitch national retailers.
So we don’t have a one-size-fits-all startup branding package.
We’ll look at what you’ve already done, what still needs doing and what investment makes sense at this stage of the business.
Then we’ll recommend a scope.
That might begin with a focused strategy project.
It might be branding and packaging.
Or it might cover the complete journey from positioning through to launch.
We’ll be clear about what we think you need, what it costs and what can sensibly wait until later.
We’ve done this before
Toast Food has been helping businesses create and develop food and drink brands for over two decades.
We’ve worked with founders launching their first products and with established businesses introducing entirely new brands and ranges.
And because Toast brings strategy, branding, packaging, print, websites and digital together, you don’t have to assemble a different group of suppliers for every stage.
We can take you to launch.
And we’ll still be here afterwards.