Spotlight: Food & Beverage

Clean Type and Fresh Photography are Key Ingredients In Recipe for Le Saucier's Gourmet-Quality Packages

Larsen Design + Interactive created classy and eye-catching new packages for a new category of frozen gourmet sauces.

When Doug Hoag started his own company and introduced his line of frozen gourmet Le Saucier sauces, retailers embraced the concept and liked his products. Reaching new consumers walking down supermarket aisles, however, proved more elusive.

Hoag sought out the help of Larsen Design + Interactive, a Minneapolis design firm, to help his boxes get noticed and picked up. Diana Lillicrap, senior account executive at Larsen, and Jo Davison, creative vice president, led the project. The Larsen team researched the market and competition as part of a broad exploration phase that produced many spirited discussions.

Le Saucier sauces are frozen because the gourmet quality precludes the use of preservatives and other common additives often found in processed foods. The majority of supermarket shoppers would not even be aware that a product like this exists, so they would hardly search it out in the clutter of a freezer case. The Larsen firm realized that the package had to create intrigue the moment it caught a shopper's eye.

"Le Saucier" is the fictional chef icon, now stylized on the back of the box over a detailed explanation of the product inside.

Lillicrap explains that during the designing process, Larsen simulated shopping environments by placing the box designs in mock-up freezer cases. In real-life freezer situations, there's always the possibility that the product will sit on awkward bottom shelves or get shoved into any free space. To make the most of this inevitability, the new box is equally capable of catching shoppers' attention in two facing orientations — wide or tall. The black side panels would even make the boxes stand out if they were stacked.

All the elements of the box have a crisp look, and even the photography works in the two possible shelf positions. Photographer Regina Murphy created delectable dishes that convey the gourmet setting at first glance. Davison says the cleanness of presentation reflects the quality of the product inside. "The photography is really fresh," says Davison. "It positions the product in the situation where they actually use it."

The Le Saucier wordmark is the clean serif typeface Monotype Modern, also relatively easy to read on its side. Davison says the extra large "Le" is primarily a visual tool to catch freezer case browsers. The sans serif copy on the front is small, but still tells a quick story of how the product will be used, starting with a formal tone: "Our chef suggests this sauce for..." Paragraphs on the back of the box elaborate on the quality and use of the sauces in the friendly voice of Le Saucier, or the sauce chef.

Hoag says that all response has been that the package positions the sauces as very high quality, and comments include: "the carton speaks well of the fine product inside," "looks like fine dining," "it jumps off the shelf," and "it makes you pick it up and read the carton."

"The response has been much greater than we expected," Hoag says. "We first changed out the cartons in Southern California and saw an upsurge in sales immediately. As we open new territories in the U.S., the first thing everyone says is 'Wow, what a beautiful package.'"