It’s a tough market for new food brands, so you need to get all the ingredients together for the best possible start.

From artisan producers to venture-backed brands, we work with a wide range of new food brands to help with the fundamentals of food branding.

We provide a range of services that can be delivered to suit your startup food branding budget and help you succeed in the competitive food sector. These include:

We are a food startup branding specialist, so wherever you are on your branding journey, get in touch for a no-obligation chat.

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About Toast - Food and Drink Branding Experts

What’s in a name? Make your new food brand memorable.

Some startups come to us with a name firmly in mind for their new venture, others come with ideas for us to explore and occasionally we work on new naming projects.

Wherever you are in naming your soon-to-be well-known product, getting the naming right is crucial.

We can help you with:

  • Appropriateness assessments
  • Trademark checks
  • Market research
  • Creative brainstorming
  • New brand naming workshops

Every food brand has a story, and the naming is arrived at as part of the journey, so this isn’t a scientific process, it’s more about if it works, is unique and is future-proof.

A little research done upfront can save you costly renames and rebrands further down the line, so we don’t force this process, but we do recommend it.

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The Jungle Nigerian Red Stew Brand Design startup food branding

Cooking up the right logo.

Your logo is not your brand, it’s one part of your overall branding, it means very little on its own: you have to fill it up with your story, customer experience, reviews and sheer hard work before it starts to represent you.

Given everything you need to do to get your brand out there, you don’t want to have to change your logo further down the line, so it’s worth investing the time to get this right for your startup.

Whether you’re coming to us with an idea or you want us to take the lead, we have the in-house ingredients to get your logo right. Our design team has wide-randing experience in working with rookie food brands and we can make sure you start off in the right direction.

Food brand start-up logo design startup food branding
Food brand startup logo design startup food branding
Food start-up logo design startup food branding
start-up food brand logo design startup food branding
logo design for foodie start up startup food branding
Food brand start-up logo designs startup food branding
branding for food start up startup food branding
Food brand start-up logo design startup food branding
Jack and Bry design - packaging design

Exciting and impactful packaging design.

To put it basically: your product is never going to sell if the packaging is boring.

Packaging design creates the promise of what is inside, so your amazing food needs equally amazing packaging.

We can help you with:

  • Market research to see what will engage with your customers
  • Design research to explore the current market
  • Creative concepts for design direction
  • Full design and professional artwork
  • Advice on professional food packaging producers
  • Trademark checks
  • All the do’s and don’t in terms of food labelling legislation

It’s important not to dive into the creative without first doing the research, so each stage of this process is important, especially if you are completely new to this game and need help with some of the more detailed stuff.

Once we do move onto the creative, our 10-strong team of designers produce loose initial concepts to explore lots of directions before we hone in on the perfect design.

We see packaging design just like developing a food recipe, it’s all about passion, experimentation, creativity and refinement.

Get packaging design

Promoting your new food brand.

You need more than a great product and branding to make it in today’s market, so we also offer website design and build, SEO and social media all via our in-house team.

Building the buzz online should start as soon as possible, but it needs to be done consistently to grow brand equity and trust in your new brand.

We can help you with:

  • The design and build of a WordPress site (with or without e-commerce)
  • Creation of your social media assets (overall creative direction and design)
  • Search engine optimisation to start getting you found in Google (et al)
  • Ongoing SEO, Social and content work to make you more visible

As a startup food brand, you simply might not have a lot of budget to throw at SEO and SMM so we can plan out a scope of work that’s right for you.

For some clients, we create the assets to be used as templates and then they go all out on a DIY approach, for others we manage the entire process, it’s all about where you are and what’s right at this point.

Started marketing

Ethical Food Co website 1
Ethical Food Co website 2
Ethical Food Co website 3

Clever corporate guidelines.

The word corporate might not seem like something that sits within the start-up food branding sector, but it’s important to think like a big brand.

Creative work, logos, fonts, colours, and tone of voice are best organised into Corporate Guidelines to keep everything sorted.

We’ve found that startup food brands that invested a little more budget into properly formalising their branding spend less in the long run on design and creativity.

Drink brand start up guidelines
Drink brand start up guidelines
Drink brand start up guidelines
Drink brand start up guidelines
Drink brand start up guidelines
Drink brand start up guidelines
brand guidelines example foodies start up
brand guidelines example foodies start up
brand guidelines example foodies start up
brand guidelines example foodies start up
brand guidelines example foodies start up
brand guidelines example foodies start up

Pulling everything together.

Toast is not a small design studio, we’ve been working with startup food brands for over 10 years and we’ve been around for over 25 years.

One reason many foodie startup brands choose to work with us is that we do everything in-house and have the breadth of experience rookie brands need.

From advice to website design, we have everything covered and as we’re based in Oxfordshire, we don’t come with the London price-tag.

 

Baby Food Branding and Packaging by Toast Food

Frequently asked questions

What does a project cost?

This largely depends on what you need us to do, and that means we need a brief. If you don’t have one, we can send you a briefing questionnaire so we can quickly get some options together for you.

How long does a project take?

Anywhere from four weeks to six months, again, this much depends on where you are on your journey and the scope of the work. We don’t rush things.

What other services do we offer?

We’re a full-service design agency, so everything from animation to websites. Basically, if it’s design-related, we do it (all in-house).

Do we use freelancers?

No, all work is done by our own full-time team of qualified designers (they all have Design degrees to BA and MA levels). We don’t outsource or off-shore anything either. If we can’t do it in-house, we don’t do it.

How does the creative process work?

Great creative needs the right ingredients, so we always start with a brief, objectives and outcomes. When it comes to the creative craft, we work with sketches initially to cover a lot of ideas before we select and refine the direction on the Macs.

Do we work remotely?

We work with clients all over the place, and we like to keep project miles to a minimum, so it doesn’t matter where you are, we can work with you.

Do we work with sole traders?

From one-person bands to larger companies, we work with a wide range of clients. Some start-ups have investments and larger budgets, others are entirely self-funding, so what we do is define the appropriate way we can work with people.

Do we ever get it wrong?

A successful project needs a well-defined brief, and when the brief is clear, the creative is appropriate and on-point. Sometimes creativity can miss the mark, but that is why we work on paper first and explore directions without burning the budget. We never present three ideas and ask you to pick the one you hate the least.

What are we like to work with?

We’re a creative-led design agency, we don’t have salespeople and we’re informally professional. We don’t have account managers, so your experience will be dealing directly with the creative team – we think this improves communication and creativity.

Do you need creative and branding work for your new food startup?

We specialise in working with start-up and challenger brands. Get in touch today for a no-obligation chat about your new venture.

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