Why a Vegan Patisserie?
Share my journey of how I decided to start a vegan patisserie
Hey Butterwickers! It's Jyoti again. I hope you are all excited to read my next instalment and living life full of passion!
I want to share with you the story of how we ended up as Butterwicks Vegan Patisserie.
Brand creation is really key as we keep on learning, and when you are a plant based business getting that right is so important. So let's start at the start.
Butterwick Cakes
The route to becoming a vegan patisserie actually started when we established Butterwick Cakes in 2011. You will have read in my previous posts about how we started off making vegetarian and vegan cakes and cupcakes. At the time we were exclusively making cakes. How many of you out there love baking? Well if you are like me you get addicted to it don't you? With my inspiration being my dad's sweet tooth, I took to remember old recipes from my child hood, Victoria sponges, Chocolate fudge cakes, cupcakes, pastries and I created a whole bunch of fancy cake designs for friends and family. I'll leave those for another day and promise to share some of my recipes with you in future posts, including vegan and gluten free deliciousness in the form of my sponge cakes.
My dad had an unbelievably sweet tooth, bless him. You know some of the funniest memories I have of him were in his later years. I remember spending afternoons with him and literally every time we had afternoon tea, it had to be accompanied by a digestive or an almond finger. To the point that mum used to find digestive biscuit crumbs in the top pocket of his night shirt, and dad? Poker faced denial of the evidence, "it wasn't me! Nope it can't be me, who would eat digestives at night?" My mum didn't know whether to laugh or cry as she vacuumed the crumbs from under the covers in the middle of the night before snuggling in to bed.
I get so easily side tracked don't I? Back to my vegan patisserie story. As I realised I was more and more intolerant to dairy and gluten I tinkered with new vegan cake recipes. By the way I have the best and simplest chocolate vegan cake recipe which I again promise to share with you one day. My focus shifted towards French pastry and the possibilities that offered. Wouldn't it be amazing to have a vegan patisserie one day? Bakery items that would include eclairs, lemon curd tarts, fruit topped desserts, coconut exoticness, colours, flavours that exploded my creativity! My son's fund raising campaign kick started my vegan macaron adventure (you can read more in my earlier blog posts), and then that was it I was hooked. Little by little my competency grew and I knew I could make delicious, unique, indulgent macarons full of colours and flavours and with no milk or egg! I wanted more though! Don't get me wrong, I love my macarons, but my naughty streak wanted to explore, to cheat a little on my macarons and find a mistress to keep me interested, if you know what I mean.
London was a game changer
It was on one of my trips to London with my hubby, Gunny, that I remember walking past these absolutely awe inspiring patisseries by Trafalgar Square. The colours: red, yellow, green pink purple, the flavours: strawberry, chocolate, lemon, vanilla, and the shining glazes, French sexiness in each and every display. The inquisitive part of me got stirred up. How many of you get what I mean? Could I create a vegan patisserie? Could I create French pastries without eggs, milk and flour? Well, if you do the research you will be amazed at what's possible. After all creation is infinite and therefore the possibilities must be infinite too! Maybe I wouldn't be London's first vegan patisserie but I could still be a vegan patisserie, plant based, offering gluten free options to the whole of the country. Now that is ambitious and consumes London too!
The decision to become Butterwicks Vegan Patisserie
London kicked me in to a dilemma. Then Gunny whisked me off to Paris. That just did it for me. How could I deny me, Jyoti, the creative spirit that I was not to make these wonderful, decadent, divine desserts? We were already convinced that Butterwick Cakes would have to take a new direction. We were 90% convinced we should be Butterwick Vegan Macarons. After all we wanted to be UK's number 1 vegan macarons. However, I absolutely looooved the exquisiteness of French pastries and I just couldn't shake the idea of expanding my creative horizons. I wanted to make macarons, and I also wanted to make other pastries and desserts, croissants, mirror-glaze entremes, tarts, tartelettes, cream-filled choux and much much more.
Working with my girl Jagdeep, our graphics designer (unashamed shout out) creator and owner of Grafix5, we made up a bunch of logos, concepts and company names ranging from Butterwick Cakes Vegan Macarons, Macarons by Butterwick Cakes, Butterwick Vegan Macarons. Macarons by Butterwick Cakes...again! We even had Macarons by Butterwick Cakes Vegan Patisserie. You can see how all this was such a confusing mess. Would you know what we were really about? No!! of course not. We were everything and nothing at the same time.
Then what? Well how about Butterwicks and that's it, nothing else. It sounded good, a simple name, simple brand...and then the dreaded search on Google for Butterwicks. There was so much out there with Butterwicks and we would not have an identity. It just didn't stand out and we were no further to the solution.
The value of a great graphics designer
Back to the drawing board with Jagdeep, our most tolerant angel of tranquillity and patience. Words of wisdom flowed. "Butterwicks was a link to my childhood and to my dad right?" She asked. "We wanted to make these delights and therefore we had to be a patisserie, was that true?", again fact. "We were plant-based, vegan and would stay true to that?" Yes of course. "Join it all together and you get Butterwicks Vegan Patisserie." That is who we were, who we are and who we want to be! Straight, honest and clear and we got it. Three words captured me, my vision and my passion. What followed then was the link to our core which was my baby, the vegan macaron, and again Jagdeep came up with the ideal solution! A little nugget that defined our brand, didn't need words and our Butterwickers could relate to. Yes you guessed it, our two coloured macaron logo! That was a genius brainchild of Grafix5 to keep our core macaron identity and it would become our brand, simple, colourful and contemporary. I loved it and what you see is who we are now.
So what did I learn and what can I share about my experience?
If you are on a journey to create a name or logo don't be scared to explore. We went through so many iterations as you will see in my little gallery here. We went from abstract to tacky to eventually the final design. Trust your instinct. When you know it isn't right, it isn't right. When you know it is right then it is right. Seems obvious and our minds sometimes like to miss the obvious. We learnt that simplicity was really important. Knowing who you are aiming the brand at is key. We got lost in that at the start and once we could define our ideal customer profile, we started to see which of the concepts would fit. Take your time, look at lots of ideas, explore colours and combinations. Ask friends and family what they think. What do they like? Who do they think this would appeal to? Does it give the impression of the best, the essence of what you are? This one is a scary one, but find the harshest critics and get them to review. There is no point having nice comments, you want to get it right so get critical reviews, they will move you forward much faster towards your end goal. I am not going to say who mine is but I have her, and I love her because she roots for us to win. She makes sure she apologises before she starts to rip us apart, and the end result? Always a million time better than at the start.
Within all of this I ended up at the Vegan Gastronomy Culinary Academy in Spain and that is another blog post that I will share with you. What an experience that was, it was a game changer!
Right Butterwickers! I'm sign off now and look forward to sharing more of my stories with you soon. I promised to share recipes so look out for those coming soon!
Love you all Jyoti x