When making a brand, appearance is an extremely major part. The product may be nice, and a consumer may enjoy it but people won't buy something that looks bad. So what do you do? Make the packaging awesome!

Today I spent the whole day working in the back room of Saint Cupcake packaging mail orders. In case you didn't know already, Saint Cupcake recently starting mailing cupcakes ALL OVER THE COUNTRY! Well, the continental US at least. Anywhere else takes too long to mail to, and the cupcakes don't taste as good. Because of how Saint Cupcake packages and times the....packages..., they are the cheapest mail order cupcakes in the country!! Here's the website: www.cupcakestakeflight.com. Apparently most places ship cupcakes using dry ice as packaging, which makes things extremely costly. Saint Cupcake (specifically Jami and the online manager Galen) spent a lot of time designing the packaging for this, and the outcome is adorable, professional, and all-in-all, extremely well put together.

I'll now walk you through the steps that it takes. Each package is hand packed from making the boxes to sealing the cupcakes baggies (and everything else in between and around), meaning it takes A LOT of time. In addition, cupcakes are only shipped on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday so none are left sitting in a lonely post office all Sunday, losing flavor and being sad. So they are packed up tight and sent out to arrive on or before Saturday!

Step one: Make boxes and fill with crinkly, shredded paper-padding-stuff. (observe the picture)

Those hands you see belong to Zora, who taught me the whole process while we argued about Zac Efron and she told me stories about the infamy of her name.

Okay, the boxes are done. Now, step two: Lay out the orders with specified sprinkles and extra cupcake pick, if ordered. Note, if you order cupcakes through this and would like a cupcake pick, choose "random, but funny" which could mean anything from a starfish pick to a hotdog pick. 

Then, once the freshly bakes cupcakes are completely cool, they get sealed into little baggies. I'm not sure how to turn a picture, so for now turn your head or computer screen 90 degrees to get the full effect. 

Next comes the most time consuming part. Labeling all of the cupcakes and frosting tubs. They're trying out new labels, brown strips instead of white round ones because the brown fits the design more, and the strip will help keep the frosting tub lids from coming off in transit (frosting is to be applied AFTER the cupcakes arrive and are opened to the delighted faces of various people across the country, not to the dark and solitary claustrophobia inducing box inside an airplane 30,000 feet above ground.). Anyway, the strips were finicky but they looked very uniform once in the packages. Most of the cupcakes in the above picture are labeled.

Finally, it was time to put everything together! Each cupcake and frosting gets a little nest in the packaging and is nestled all safe and sound for the big adventure! Imagine opening one of these:

Then they're sealed and off to the post office! (time to tilt your head/computer again!) Zora acting as spokesmodel!

I don't want to put the idea into anyone's head buuut... college care package?