Recipe books – which is best for your product…right now?

If you manufacture food for a living, the most exciting thing you can see is someone super-hyped about your products.

There are several tools you can use to help create this outcome, but our favourite by far is the humble (or, by the end of this post, we might all agree, not so humble) recipe book.

What’s not to love? Images (there has to be images, don’t even THINK you can build a cookbook without them) that ooze appetite appeal, that enlist even your most ardent fence-sitter to a jaw-dropping ‘nom nom.’ Plus a ‘how-to’ guide on making the dish within said jaw-dropping image.

When your audience are chefs there are plenty of things to remember:

1. A chef loves to put their own spin on things. Use copy that makes them feel welcome to do this.
2. Commercial kitchens use specialised equipment, ingredients and measurements.
3. Emotional benefits for chefs are different than for a consumer audience. Think food costs, portion sizes, economies of scale and so on.

Recipe books come in all shapes and sizes. In fact, we should rename this post to Recipe Delivery Mechanisms. So feel free to be imaginative, what will suit your current campaign, your product, your brand? Some examples:

1. Trade show collateral – Try a cost effective A5 saddle stitch promo piece. The images and clever design will make this piece stand out and have major pick-up-appeal.
   
2. Client gift – Go all out – perfect or custom binding on the spine; foils, embossing or other treatments on the cover; beautiful gift box for presentation.
3. Gift with purchase – Whether you’re in the retail or foodservice game, you’re dealing with people who LOVE a gift with purchase. Try a special shape, an interesting paper stock, gatefolds or cost effective treatments that deliver on cut through.
4. Recipe cards – Easy to pick up, simple to store, cost effective to produce, recipe cards can be a great ongoing (repeat print runs) promo piece. Or if you’re keen to take it up a notch, look at this recipe card execution we did for a client last year. Amazing, aren’t they?
5. Promotional piece – This is a concept we’re in the middle of preparing for ourselves. It’s really got some “wow” factor in it’s shape and design (the shot shown here is from our Don KRC Foodservice photoshoot last month – gorgeous).
   

Are your creative juices flowing yet? Do you have some ideas for your product’s newest piece of groovy collateral – your own Recipe Delivery Mechanism? Hmm, we might need to rename the rename to get any traction…

Either way, if you want a hand fleshing out your project, give us a call. We offer recipe development, photography, food styling, design, print and delivery.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS:

Custom Bind – Something ‘out of the box’ hand stitched in twine, old fashioned external staple and so on.

Embossing and Foil  – Together with our printers, we can create something amazing for you with a spot of foil (shiny metallic) over your logo (for example), or an embossed design element that has a 3D effect by pressing the paper.

Gatefold – When the inside front, or inside back cover has an additional leaf folded in on itself.

Paper Stock – Refers to the kind of paper you use in the execution – coated, uncoated, recycled, kraft, white etc.

Perfect Bind – Single sheets of paper collated at one end and glued to form a spine, usually encased in a four page cover. Commonly reserved for thick books.

Saddle stitch – Simple staple along the centre of the spine. See this post for a full explanation.

Special treatments – Like embossing and foils, there are many different kinds of treatments we can design into your execution, too many to name here, just talk us through the style you’re looking for and we can make suggestions!