Lovin’ Cup Sauce Packaging
Bottle up the magic and give the people what they want.
Deliverables.
Background
After more than a decade of adulation from customers about the soups and sauce that accompany their favorite dishes at The Cup, the partners and staff figured it would be a great idea to give the people what they want. Bottle these favorite chefs’ signature recipes and allow customers to take a piece of Lovin Cup to enjoy at home.
The chef staff’s inventive style to comfort food classics are a huge part of what keeps The Cup’s customers coming back. So when the idea came up to produce, package and sell the soups and sauces made by their creative culinarians it only made sense to feature each chef on the label designs.
How We Helped
We met with Leslie and the chefs at Lovin’ Cup to sample the goods (and a few beers) and discuss the direction of this dream project.
We decided that the focus of the first label was going to be Sous Chef James’ Bourbon Meat Sauce. Keeping with the intent to feature its creator as the star, the label show cases a stylized, mixed media illustration of Chef James. We started with the professional headshot we had taken of him as a reference, then illustrated his hat and face. Both shirt and t-shirt were given the Photoshop treatment (brightness & contrast) and then live traced in Illustrator. The result is James, personified.
To give the sauce it’s boozy-kick and support its namesake, Lovin Cup teamed up with fellow local business, Iron Smoke Distillery – a collab made for the food and bourbon gods and goddesses. Notice the apparition of Iron Smoke’s iconic “Skully” hovering in the background.
Speaking of the background, we introduced a bit of grunge to bring in the bistro’s well-known interior use of rustic materials such as aggregate concrete and galvanized metal.
As a final touch that will carry out through the rest, the ingredients list is edged with illustrations of barley and hot peppers, as a nod to some of the sauce’s special ingredients.
