Case № 03
Toronto's first certified organic cold-pressed juicery, scaled from one storefront to four through a brand system, ecommerce site, and packaging that customers refused to throw away.
Village Juicery is Toronto's first certified organic cold-pressed juice bar. When co-founders Tyler Colford and Omar Salama brought me in, they were one storefront with a brand that didn't yet exist outside the door. By the time we shipped the second site iteration, they were running four stores across Toronto and the surrounding area, distributing through retail partners, and booking nutrition consultations through the website.
I designed the entire brand system. The logo, the bottle and jar packaging that became the most-recognized object in their category, the responsive WordPress ecommerce site, the editorial blog re-positioned as an in-house nutrition education channel, and the mobile booking flow that lets customers schedule a consultation in two taps. Every layer was built so the in-store experience and the online experience felt like the same brand.
This case study walks through how the work shipped, what the strategy was, and why each decision held up as Village Juicery scaled.
Village Juicery had grown faster than its first website could keep up with. The launch site we'd shipped together had done its job carrying the brand from zero to a working business, but the team was now managing four storefronts, a wholesale distribution arm, and a daily content cadence that the original publishing tools couldn't keep up with.
Tyler and Omar wanted three things from the redesign. The brand identity had to grow up without losing the warmth that had built the customer base. The ecommerce site had to convert without making customers feel like they'd left a juice bar and walked into a supplement store. And the back-of-house had to be simple enough for the in-store team to keep updated without designer support every time a new product launched.
There was also a packaging problem. The original Boston Round glass bottles we'd designed were so loved that customers were keeping them instead of returning them for recycling. Beautiful for the brand, expensive for the supply chain. The new system had to address that without diluting what made the bottle work in the first place.
I started where I always start with food and beverage clients: at the buyer journey. How does someone find Village Juicery, what convinces them on the product page, what gets them to a second order. From there I worked backward into the brand system, the ecommerce architecture, and the packaging.
The brand identity refresh kept the original wordmark recognizable but tightened the type system, expanded the color palette to handle the broader product line (juices, milks, food, jars), and built out a photography direction that used the actual juice color as the primary visual anchor. No stock food photography. Every shot was custom, in-house, in the same lighting setup so the product line read as a single family.
The site was rebuilt in WordPress with a custom template system, a dynamic store locator integrated with Google Maps so customers could find the nearest of the four stores, and a third-party scheduling integration that lets visitors book a nutrition consultation directly from the page. The blog was rebuilt as Education, repositioning Village Juicery as the source customers turn to when they want to understand cold-pressed juice and nutrition, not just when they want to buy a bottle.
I ran working sessions with Tyler and Omar to nail the audience, the positioning, and the visual mood before any pixels were pushed. The output was a one-page brand brief that every downstream decision (logo, packaging, site, photography) tied back to.
I rebuilt the wordmark, expanded the color palette to support the wider product line, and locked the type pairing. The system was designed to scale: storefront signage, packaging, web, social, and trade-show banners all read as the same brand.
I designed the printed-on-glass label so the juice color carried the brand instead of competing with it. The back of each bottle got icon-based nutritional info and a witty copy block that taught customers something. Customers loved the bottles enough to keep them, which is a packaging problem and a marketing win at the same time.
I built the responsive site on WordPress with a custom template system, a Google-Maps-driven store locator, the Education blog architecture, and a checkout that the in-store team could actually run on launch day.
I integrated a third-party scheduling tool into the site so customers could book a nutritionist consultation at any of the four stores in two taps. The flow was designed mobile-first because that's where the booking traffic actually came from.
The logo was the first deliverable because everything else (packaging, web, signage) inherits from it. I rebuilt the wordmark, locked a typographic pairing that worked at the scale of a 16px nav link and a 6-foot storefront sign, and built a color system anchored on the juice colors themselves rather than an arbitrary brand palette. That decision flowed downstream into every photograph and product render the brand published over the next four years.
The Boston Round bottle was the format we landed on. The label is printed directly on the glass so the vibrant juice color reads as the primary visual. The back of the bottle is icon-based nutritional info plus a copy block that teaches a single nutrition fact per product. The first time we sampled the bottles at a pre-launch event, customers refused to return them for recycling. That was the moment we knew the system worked.
The first site had been built as a single-store website. The rebuild had to account for four storefronts, retail distribution, online ordering, and a content team running a near-daily editorial cadence. I designed the WordPress information architecture around three primary jobs: buy product, find a store, learn about a product or nutrition topic. Everything else (about, press, careers) lived behind those three. The store locator is a custom-styled Google Map integration so customers can filter by location and partner without leaving the page.
Most of the booking traffic was from customers already inside the store reaching for their phone, or from customers commuting home thinking about their next visit. I designed the consultation booking as a mobile-first flow with the third-party scheduler integrated inline, no popup. Two taps from the homepage to a confirmed booking. The desktop experience inherited the same flow rather than the other way around.
The site is built on WordPress because the in-store team needed to add new products, publish nutrition content to Education, and manage the storefront listings without involving a designer. I trained the team on a content workflow, set up the page metadata system so every product and blog post ships with the right title and description for search engines, and built the templates so the brand system can't accidentally drift when someone adds a new page.
Not a services list. The real work streams, in the order I ran them.
Working sessions with Tyler and Omar to land the audience, positioning, and visual mood before any design started. The output was a one-page brief every downstream decision tied back to.
Logo, type pairing, color palette anchored on the juice colors, and a photography direction shot in-house in a single lighting setup. The system carried storefront signage, packaging, the website, social, and trade-show banners.
Boston Round glass with the label printed directly on the glass so the juice color reads as the primary visual. Back-of-bottle icons for nutritional info and a copy block that teaches a single nutrition fact per product.
Responsive WordPress build with a custom template system, Google-Maps-integrated store locator across four stores, a checkout the in-store team can run, and the Education blog rebuilt as a nutrition content channel.
Third-party scheduler integrated inline so customers book a nutrition consultation in two taps. Mobile-first because that's where the booking traffic actually came from.
Per-page metadata architecture (so every page tells search engines what it's about), redirects from the legacy site, and a hand-off training on the publishing workflow so the in-store team can ship new pages without involving a designer.
The Village Juicery storefront, in the browser.
Touch-first, two-tap consultation booking.
Across the cleanse, the bottles, the booking flow.
Nick has been our most important branding partner to date hands down. From logo design to website creation, Nick connected with our brand vision, delivered outstanding creativity, and executed seamlessly across multiple applications. It has been an absolute pleasure to learn from his expertise and we look forward to continuing our long-term partnership together.
The site launched and Village Juicery has been running on it as the foundation of their digital presence ever since. The brand has grown from one storefront to four across the Greater Toronto Area, and the system I built (brand, packaging, web, content) carried that growth without needing a structural rebuild.
Tyler describes the engagement as a long-term partnership: "Nick has been our most important branding partner to date hands down." That's the outcome that matters most for a project like this. Village Juicery treats the brand and the site as load-bearing infrastructure, not as one-off marketing artifacts.
The Boston Round bottles have become one of the recognizable objects in Toronto's organic juice category. The Education blog has grown into a content channel customers cite as a reason they buy the brand. The ecommerce flow continues to convert, and the booking system books nutrition consultations across the four stores.
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