Print Solutions Magazine

It’s not often that a partnership forged in kindergarten evolves into a highly successful international business. But that’s the story of Eileen Spitalny and David Kravetz, lifelong friends and co-founders of Fairytale Brownies. They met at age 5, started working on class projects together in the third grade, decided in high school that they would one day open a business together, and made their dream come true six years after graduating from college. Today, Chandler, Ariz.-based Fairytale Brownies bakes and ships more than 2.5 million brownies a year.

The grassroots company started in 1992, with Spitalny and Kravetz baking his mom’s brownie recipe in a friend’s 1,000-square-foot catering kitchen using different types of chocolate (taste tests proved Belgian chocolate to be the favorite). They intended to sell the brownies wholesale to coffeehouses, but that plan fell through when they realized that unsold product spoiled too quickly. At the same time, the brownies sold well at local farmer’s markets and street fairs, and customers frequently requested them to send as gifts. So Spitalny and Kravetz positioned Fairytale Brownies as a mail-order company, giving them more quality control and allowing them to sell a dozen brownies at a time, increasing their per-customer profit.

Fast-forward 10 years, and the brownie business was booming. The product had been perfected, but the packaging—to which the partners attributed 50 percent of sales—needed a boost. Elisabeth Spitalny Lee, principal of Lee Design Studio, Encino, Calif., had been the design consultant for Fairytale since the company’s launch and was charged with overhauling the packaging of Fairytale’s core product, the 3-inch-square brownie. Before, the brownies were wrapped in a clear polypropylene wrapper with a pink-purple label that wasn’t true to the signature bluish-purple company color. The label also wasn’t being applied accurately. “There was so much shifting that they were losing brownies on the line,” Lee says. Plus, with the poly wrapper, the brownies (of which 95 percent are gifts) had to be refrigerated almost immediately upon arrival.

Lee specified a printable barrier film wrapper that protects the brownies and allows them to remain unrefrigerated for 7 to 10 days. Using an eyemark to ensure proper print registration on the wrapper also reduced the number of wasted brownies by eliminating the “shifting” problem caused by applying labels. In addition, it allowed for printing on both the front and back of the brownie, which meant that, unlike before, all the product information—flavor, ingredients, nutrition facts, company information and storage instructions—could be displayed right on the packaging.

The company also employed a new silver ULTRASTAR ink, which is a sparkly silver as opposed to the flat silver ink used on preprinted labels, Lee says. “Because silver was one of Fairytale Brownies’ signature colors, we were intrigued by the ultra-bright appearance of ULTRASTAR ink,” she says. “The ink was designed to give foil-like packaging results using an in-line printing alternative to costly metalized substrates and foil stamping.”

According to Spitalny, Fairytale Brownies was the first company in the United States to use the silver ULTRASTAR ink, and it created some production challenges for Alcan Packaging, Bellwood, Ill. (The wrappers now are printed by Belmark, De Pere, Wis.). Restrictions in using flexographic printing required Lee to add a 1.2-pt. keyline around the artwork—the company’s whimsical elf mascot, which dances while yielding a bowlful of brownie batter and a spoon. Because the stroke would have been difficult to apply to the elf’s delicately drawn body, Lee printed only its face on the label. “It came down to mathematics, just like every graphic design puzzle,” she says. “We couldn’t print and get the stroke using the flexo printer with the new ink.”

The packaging also integrated the proprietary Fairytale Brownies font—Magico—that Lee and co-designer Tesia Rynkiewicz had created 18 months before. The result is a still-recognizable character and a much cleaner-looking label, which only took eight weeks to redesign.

The new wrapper improved profit margins by eliminating waste and was a hit with Fairytale customers, who especially appreciated the extended brownie shelf life. So in 2004, the company gave their gift boxes a facelift as well. Until then, the brownies were packaged in pre-made jewelry gift boxes that just happened to come in purple and fit one, two or four brownies; they hot-stamped the Fairytale logo or a personal message on the box in silver. The boxes were cute and convenient, but did little to reinforce the Fairytale brand. And with their many components and processes, they were becoming an order-processing nightmare.

Again, the company turned to Lee, who created a custom packaging solution called “messengers”—pop-up card stock boxes with four closure flaps. Like the jewelry boxes, the messengers can hold three quantities of brownies. But the new boxes have an expressly Fairytale element—the top two flaps each have a small cutout and are designed to slide and lock together to create a swirl, a familiar company icon. The swirl is scored so that it “stands up,” giving the package a bow-like flair. All pertinent information is printed on the box, eliminating the need for an enclosure sheet or a tag. Lee even created a white To/From message area that’s masked on press so it remains uncoated, allowing gift-givers to write a personal message to the recipient (or apply a clear label) right on the box using any type of pen.

The messengers feature three Pantone colors—the Fairytale purple, silver and caramel—so that they can be shared among the three different-sized containers on press at Fibre Containers in City of Industry, Calif. The insides of the boxes are flooded with silver, reinforcing the product’s premium quality. “We also did a lot of color-matching to make sure that the purple on the messengers matched the purple on the brownie label almost precisely, so everything was uniform,” Lee says. She also was pleased to see the Fairytale graphic language that she, with the help of Rynkiewicz, had been developing for more than a decade come together in one cohesive product. “I was able to make a pattern and feature some of the swirls and whimsical items that were just Fairytale Brownies,” Lee says. This was also the company’s first move from kraft boxes to heavy card stock. Now, the more labor-intensive jewelry boxes are used exclusively for custom event favors.

The messengers are a success for both customers and the company. Because the boxes are shipped and stored flat, then pop open, they’re easier for the shipping department to stock and fill. And at about 33 cents a box, the messengers are actually cheaper to produce than the jewelry boxes. “We try to sell them now on the uniqueness of the messenger, whether it’s a leave-behind, a party favor or a gift,” Spitalny says. “The presentation is a lot more exciting.”

—Sarah Whitman

There’s more to consider than aesthetics when designing packaging for consumables. Elisabeth Spitalny Lee, principal of Lee Design Studio, Encino, Calif., and design consultant to Chandler, Ariz.-based Fairytale Brownies for 13 years, offers these tips on food packaging:

1. Ensure that the inks and print materials are safe to use with food products
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2. If your client ships food products, mail protoypes with the product inside to test for durability and quality control before you advance to the actual design phase.

3. Find out how the product will be stored. Certain inks and stocks don’t hold up well in a freezer. Also, once frozen, both the product and the packaging might expand (this could also affect shipping). Test your base materials while you’re in the conceptual phase.

4. Be sure that your packaging structure is appropriate for not only the size, but also the weight of the product.

5. Other than the first-time design charges (assuming that the client will reprint the packaging), custom design can actually be less expensive in the long run than utilizing basic setup boxes. Proprietary packaging makes a product stand out and look innovative and unique to shoppers.