Brand Foundation
Cedar & Stone
Artisan hot sauce with a brand identity strong enough to win national distribution.
Cedar & Stone made small-batch hot sauces that consistently outscored mass-market competitors in blind taste tests. Their packaging looked like it came from a school art project.
We designed a brand identity built around the founders' story: two childhood friends from New Mexico who grew up foraging and cooking together. The result was a brand with genuine roots, not manufactured authenticity.
New packaging featuring hand-illustrated botanicals, a grounded colour palette of terracotta and forest green, and storytelling that read like a letter rather than a label set Cedar & Stone apart at every stockist pitch.
The rebrand secured placement in 140 independent retailers within six months. Online DTC sales grew 290 % year-on-year. Two national grocery buyers opened conversations within the first quarter post-launch.
Key Services
- Brand strategy & positioning
- Logo & visual identity
- Packaging design
- Brand voice & messaging
- Brand guidelines
Platform
- Figma
- Adobe Illustrator
- Shopify (brand integration)
Before
Packaging That Made a Premium Product Look Homemade in the Wrong Way
A clipart chilli icon, Comic Sans-adjacent typography, and a plain white label communicated 'market stall hobby project' rather than 'small-batch artisan'. Buyers at independent food stores repeatedly cited branding as their reason for passing despite loving the product.
No Brand Story Worth Telling
The label listed ingredients and a website URL. There was no story, no character, no reason to pick this bottle over any other. In a category where purchase decisions are driven by curiosity and narrative — especially among the adventurous food audience Cedar & Stone was targeting — the absence of a story was a commercial problem.
Inconsistent Range Presentation
Three sauces in three completely different styles looked like they came from three different companies. There was no visual logic connecting the range. Stockists couldn't display them as a coherent collection and cross-sell rates were negligible.
After
Packaging That Earns Its Place on the Shelf — and Gets Picked Up
We commissioned hand-drawn botanical illustrations for each sauce (tied to its key ingredient), a bespoke wordmark with a small-batch letterpress texture, and a die-cut label with tactile paper stock. Every element was designed to justify the premium price and invite the pick-up. Sell-through at pilot stockists hit 91 % in the first three months.
A Brand Story Printed on Every Label
A four-line origin story on every back label introduced the founders, the region, and the foraging tradition behind each recipe — told plainly and memorably. Social media users began photographing and sharing the labels unprompted. Organic reach grew 400 % in the first two months post-launch.
A Coherent Range Architecture
All three sauces now use the same structural label design with variant-specific colour coding and illustration. The range reads as a family at a glance — coherent enough for retail display, distinct enough for the individual product to stand alone. Average basket size from online orders featuring multiple SKUs increased 60 %.
“We were getting turned down at the same doors we're now selling through in volume. The product never changed. The brand did — and that changed everything.”
Eli Santos
Co-Founder, Cedar & Stone
