Company background
Di’s Daisybakes are a small home baking business owned and run by Diane Guthrie, based in Londonderry which specialises in cupcakes, birthday cakes, wedding cakes and christening cakes. They also pride themselves in using quality ingredients for their handmake cakes which are delivered throughout Northern Ireland.
Diane approached NWRC Foodovation Centre for support as she developed luxury boxes which included French macarons, which are challenging to produce consistently in large volumes. Diane required support from Foodovation on refining and upscaling her recipe for macarons.
As part of this process Diane also wished to develop new innovative packaging to complement the luxury macarons and offer interactive features, which will allow clients to access augmented reality (AR) technology. The project required simulated 3D mock-ups which were used for consumer testing and allowed for Di’s Daisy bakes to try out a selection of packaging solutions before final templates were constructed.
Di’s Daisybakes were supported by the Foodovation Centre and Business Support Centre with funding from the InnovateUs programme from the Department for the Economy.
The project was split into 2 key parts; recipe development and packaging design and development. The 1st part of the project provided 30 hours 1:1 support with NWRC Foodovation Manager, Stella Graham, who provided upskilling including recipe refinement and upscaling, product labelling and nutritional declarations and allergen awareness.
The next part of the project involved packaging design and development, where NWRC Creative and Digital Media Technical Consultant, Aaron McKeever, provided 30 hours 1:1 upskilling in multiple areas of illustration, augmented reality design, prototyping 3D mock-ups.
On completion of the project, the company successfully refined and up-scaled her macaron production and developed an innovative packaging solution which compliments Di’s Daisybakes afternoon tea product.
Diane Guthrie, Owner of Di’s Daisy Bakes described the benefits of working with NWRC’s Business Support Centre via the InnovateUs programme: ‘’I was put in touch with Aaron via Stella Graham from NWRC’s Foodvation Centre who helped me perfect my macaron recipe. Aaron helped me design gorgeous packaging for my macarons which fitted the bill perfectly. What I really enjoyed was being able to ‘see’ my finished products via a brilliant app which lets me take photos of my boxes just by scanning an A4 page. I would thoroughly recommend Aaron to anyone needing help with design.’’
