Butter Cake Shoppe
Branding
Creative
Print & Packaging
Food & Drink
Consumer Brands
Background
The Challenge
Los Angeles is home to countless bakeries, some competing on price, others on aesthetics, many with heritage names. But customers looking for cakes that truly taste as good as they look often found themselves disappointed. Generic designs, long lead times, and cakes that valued spectacle over flavor left a gap in the market.
Butter Cake Shoppe, founded by sisters with a deep love of baking, had an edge: their head baker trained in Paris and built the brand around French butter, the secret to richer, more decadent flavor. But the brand needed to do more than signal “French quality.” To win in LA, it had to blend culinary credibility with cultural cool, merging old-world technique with modern, playful expression that felt at home in Los Feliz.
The challenge wasn’t simply to design another cake shop identity. It was to build a brand that could stand out as modern and cool while still honoring European craft. One that celebrated life’s milestones with both style and substance.
01. Our Insight
People don’t just buy cakes for taste. They buy them for what they represent: love, connection, celebration, memory.
We uncovered an opportunity to position Butter Cake Shoppe as more than a bakery. It could become the partner in celebration. A brand that fused French culinary expertise with LA’s quirky, modern energy, helping people mark milestones with cakes that tasted as extraordinary as they looked.
Our insight: Butter Cake Shoppe wasn’t competing with budget bakers or purely decorative brands. It was carving out its own space as accessible luxuryParisian technique wrapped in playful, Los Angeles style.
02. Brand Transformation
We repositioned Butter Cake Shoppe as a modern celebration brand, rooted in Parisian craft but expressed in a playful, Los Angeles voice. This meant reframing cakes not as transactions, but as experiences. Butter became the place you turned to when the moment mattered, whether that moment was a birthday, a wedding, or a quiet Sunday with friends.
The identity system reflected this duality. Burgundy and blush pink, drawn from European luxury, balanced against lighter tones and vintage-inspired typography that nodded to nostalgia while still feeling modern. Photography was celebratory and glamorous, but always human. Cakes captured in the middle of life, not staged on sterile pedestals. Even the packaging was designed to feel like part of the occasion: premium enough to impress, playful enough to share.
By grounding the brand in flavor and craft while wrapping it in warmth and celebration, Butter Cake Shoppe became a destination for joy.
03. Brand Application
The new identity came to life across every touchpoint, designed to transform how people experienced Butter Cake Shoppe. Packaging became more than a container; it was the first moment of celebration. Rich colors and bold typography made each box feel like a gift, elevating even a casual purchase into a party.
Photography extended that story, capturing cakes as part of real human connection and joy. A birthday candle mid-blow, friends laughing over slices, hands reaching for cake. Every image reinforced the idea that Butter was fueling joyful moments worth remembering.
In-store and online, the brand spoke with the same clarity and warmth. The visual system carried seamlessly into marketing collateral, creating a consistent story that was playful yet sophisticated. Even the smallest details were crafted to remind people that Butter Cake Shoppe was where French craft met Los Angeles cool, and where every cake was an invitation to celebrate.
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