B&B studio has worked together with the founders of Sauce Shop to help strengthen and harmonise the brand’s packaging design as it grows from its market stall roots to establishing itself as a household name within the major grocers. Mindful of the brand’s independent spirit – the existing visual identity and packaging design was envisaged and crafted by the founders – and a big fan of the brand’s disruptive presence on shelf, B&B was keen to avoid reinvention, working hard to elevate the design while maintaining its essence and edge.

A respectful refresh
While Sauce Shop’s Dymo Machine-printed logo and pack design brilliantly captured the brand’s original outsider stance, B&B were tasked with bringing depth and standout consistency to the range, empowering Sauce Shop on its next stage of brand growth. The new design features a very subtly tweaked logo, and adds in colour-coded labels, clearer descriptors and tasting notes to enable navigation across variants. The original feel of layered stickers and handmade type remains, but standout is strengthened from the supermarket shelf. The redesign has also enabled the brand to meet consumer demand for squeezy bottles across certain sauces, without compromising the overall feel.

Difference through depth
A key part of the brief was to help Sauce Shop create difference for its Cooking Sauces and Seasonings ranges, which needed to compete in a different, and quite diverse, category. The new designs introduce a subtle illustration element to better communicate the products’ depth of flavour, while enabling each design to flirt with category codes and expectations. The illustrations are simple, yet slightly abstract, featuring a halftone texture and punky finish. The project also included a new set of hand-drawn icons to better communicate product benefits and showcase tone of voice, along with a chili pepper heat rating, referencing the brand’s unique fermented chili ingredients. A brand with deeply loyal advocates, the SRPs feature real customer feedback, highlighting the brand’s community feel and the love it receives from its consumers.

“Sauce Shop is a brand that knows exactly who it is and what it stands for,” says B&B founder Shaun Bowen. “We wanted to help them evolve from the great place they had got to as a start-up brand to better meet the challenges that the next few years of growth will pose.”

Pam Digva, Co-Founder at Sauce Shop says: “We are beyond excited to see this evolution of Sauce Shop hit the shelves. It’s been 11 years since we first launched Sauce Shop on a local market stall, now our products are available nationwide in most supermarkets. We needed our branding to reflect the high quality of the product. B&B were the perfect partners to push us on to the next stage of our brand growth. We’ve absolutely loved collaborating with such a creative force on this project.”