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Branding and rebranding for confectionery and baking business without losing clients: Mon Bon case study

Discover how we built and later rebranded Mon Bon, a confectionery brand that introduced French macarons to a new market. This case study shows the steps from launch to rebranding, covering brand identity, packaging, website, and content, and the lessons we now apply at Brand Doula to help clients avoid costly pitfalls.

September 04, 2025

How It Began
First Branding
Packaging Journey
Going Online
Rebranding
Photos & Video
Takeaways

Sweet Business Branding

Premium chocolate, high-quality butter, sugar frosting, and years of artisanal mastery - is that enough to build a thriving confectionery business? Nope, unfortunately, it’s not. What makes a brand unforgettable is not just a good recipe and taste, it’s an emotional and mental experience that comes along, or in other words, branding. Branding is what turns cookies, cakes, and chocolates into a hedonistic indulgence, an image in the mind of the people who crave and return to.

That’s the part many small confectioners miss. And this is why we want to tell the story of how we built our own confectionery business from scratch, experimenting, stumbling, and celebrating wins along the way. This gave us firsthand insight into how crucial branding is for creating a successful sweet business. More than that, we learned how to refresh the brand once it starts to feel outdated without losing loyal clients.
1

How to start a sweet business

Story #1 for Mon Bon journey

Once upon a time, a young girl took a spring break and traveled to Paris. Strolling through cobbled streets and café terraces, where the air smelled of coffee and croissants, she felt like she was inside a postcard.

Then she stopped in her tracks: a gigantic line stretched down the street, so long it seemed endless. Shocked but intrigued, she decided to join it. What was waiting at the front was not a Chanel bag or an Eiffel Tower souvenir. It was a delicate, pastel-colored macaron from Ladurée - a brand founded in 1862 (the pâtisserie first, the macarons later perfected in the 20th century) that became a global icon. Today, Ladurée sells millions of macarons each year and is recognized as the benchmark for French patisserie worldwide.

The Paris experience planted a seed: why not bring this moment of indulgence back home?

We researched the market, studied competitors, and quickly discovered what insiders often say: the confectionery niche is a bloody battlefield. When we launched Mon Bon in 2011, the Western European confectionery market alone was worth about US$ 56.7 billion. Fast forward to 2024, and the broader European confectionery market has grown to around US$ 66.05 billion. Premium and artisanal products have been the fastest-rising segment worldwide. It’s highly profitable, but also fiercely competitive.

Instead of trying to outdo existing players, we decided to carve out our own blue ocean — introducing macarons to the local city market at a time when cupcake mania was fading. Timing was everything. We weren’t just selling sweets, we were creating a new cultural trend around a dessert most people had never tried before.

This is how Mon Bon was born.

2

Creating branding for a confectionery business from scratch

Story #2 for Mon Bon journey

It didn’t take long to realize that baking cookies was only half the story.
A business like this also needs a name, a logo, a slogan, a website — and most importantly, a clear positioning that explains the value and introduces the dessert to the market.

Macarons are notoriously expensive to produce, with high ingredient costs and delicate craftsmanship. Without branding, the price point can feel unjustified. With branding, it transforms into a luxury indulgence. This is exactly what Ladurée and Pierre Hermé have mastered worldwide: turning a small almond-based pastry into a symbol of French elegance, gift-giving culture, and even status.

That’s why we focused on building a brand identity that would elevate the product beyond “just a cookie.” The name Mon Bon was chosen to capture that sensorial, emotional connection. In French, it means “my sweet” or “my dear” - a phrase that feels both intimate and luxurious. Names like this matter: they don’t just label a product, they create a story customers want to be part of.

The first version of our branding was more of an experiment - almost DIY - since the goal was to test the market without heavy upfront investments. We asked a designer friend to create a logo - we picked the almond flower circled in a lavender background that would be associated with lavender fields in Provence and artisanal handwork, and give a French touch. It looked fresh, refined, and very Parisian - which immediately signaled “premium” to our early customers.

3

Packaging

Story #3 for Mon Bon journey

Running your own business means wearing every hat at once.
One day you’re a pastry chef, the next you’re suddenly a packaging engineer. With sweets, this isn’t just decoration — macarons are fragile, temperature-sensitive, and notoriously tricky to transport. If the packaging fails, the entire customer experience collapses.

At the time, there were no ready-made packaging or transportation solutions for delicate macarons. Off-the-shelf boxes were either too flimsy, too large, or simply didn’t protect the product during delivery. So, through trial and error, we engineered our own custom containers from scratch. After countless prototypes (and more than a few broken batches), we finally created sturdy sections that held each row of macarons in place.

But structural design was just half the task. The packaging also had to speak the brand language. We wanted Mon Bon to feel like a gift: something beautiful to open, not just a box of cookies. Inspired by the pastel palette of our first macarons (purple, green, yellow, beige - 9 colors total), we paired the boxes with iris floral patterns and ribbons. Seasonal editions followed: festive winter prints with red accents, spring collections with soft botanicals, and limited designs for Valentine’s Day featuring hearts.

In the confectionery industry, packaging is often as important as the product itself. According to Mintel, over 60% of consumers say attractive packaging influences their choice of sweets and chocolates, especially when buying for gifts. That’s why global brands like Godiva or Ferrero Rocher invest heavily in design. Their boxes are meant to be placed on tables, gifted, and photographed. For artisanal brands, thoughtful packaging is more than a cost, it’s a marketing tool that multiplies visibility and perceived value.

Brand Doula recommendations

4

Website

Story #4 for Mon Bon journey

These days, if you don’t have a website, it’s almost like you don’t exist.
For a bakery or confectionery brand, your site is the digital storefront — the place where people window-shop your desserts, read your story, and (ideally) click that “order now” button.

When Mon Bon began, we started with a simple social media page. Once we saw it gaining popularity, we built a website using WordPress. Back then, it was pretty much the only solution for the website creation we had: flexible, customizable, able to handle almost anything we threw at it. However, it also came with a lot of heavy lifting: coding tweaks, endless plugin updates, and design headaches that required outside help.

Looking back from our experience and the possibilities of today, life is so much easier. If you’re just starting your sweet business, we’d recommend going with a no-code platform like Tilda. It’s simple, looks great right out of the box, and doesn’t make you cry over backend errors at 2 a.m.

WordPress is still your go-to solution if you’re running a complicated e-commerce system, but for most small confectionery brands, no-code gets you online faster (and saves money you can spend on branding instead).

Brand Doula recommendations

Shoppers trust what they can see. Shopify research shows that nearly 7 out of 10 consumers won’t fully trust a business if it doesn’t have a proper website. And in the world of sweets, even small inconveniences like a clunky checkout or a site that’s hard to use on mobile can be the difference between a sale and an abandoned cart.

That’s why at Brand Doula we build websites that don’t just look pretty but also work. Smooth ordering, easy payments, and visuals that make people crave what you sell. Because we learned it from our own experience of building a successful business. See how we do it →

5

Rebranding

Story #5 for Mon Bon journey

These days, if you don’t have a website, it’s almost like you don’t exist.
Three years after launch, Mon Bon had grown - more customers, more recognition, and more lessons learned. With that growth came the realization: the brand also had to evolve. It was time for rebranding.

Our first attempt was honestly, a bit of a flop. We tweaked the logo but left the rest of the identity and positioning untouched. That was the mistake. A logo on its own doesn’t carry a brand. Without a full system behind it, like visuals, voice, packaging, story, it fell flat.

What went wrong with the first update:
  • Printing quality was poor, details got lost
  • The audience didn’t see the brand as premium anymore
  • The simplified logo didn’t reflect the artistry of the desserts
  • It created barriers for attracting large B2B clients and investors

Two years later, wiser and braver, we made a second attempt. This time, we didn’t just refresh the logo — we rebuilt the entire brand ecosystem.

What changed after the full rebrand:

  • Clean, minimalist, modern identity that felt fresh and upscale

  • Easy application across every touchpoint — packaging, banners, social media

  • Ability to raise prices across the product line

  • Opening of signature flagstore boutiques

  • Higher customer loyalty and recognition

  • Attraction of a new, more affluent audience

Many brands treat rebranding as just a “new logo.” But successful rebrands are holistic — they touch product design, packaging, storytelling, and even pricing strategy. Look at Häagen-Dazs, which refreshed its identity in 2017: the new visual system didn’t just modernize the look, it repositioned the brand as design-forward and premium, boosting sales in younger audiences. Rebranding is not simply a decoration, it’s actually an entire business strategy.

Brand Doula recommendations

6

Brand photography and video for confectionery

Story #6 for Mon Bon journey

Such a visually-savvy business as confectionery requires you to consistently create high-quality visual content.
For Mon Bon, we executed a series of photo and video shoots, all developed under one unified concept. Every piece of content was designed to complement each other. Together, they created consistency, and made Mon Bon recognizable, memorable, and premium.

For Mon Bon, we wanted to show not only the product but also the mood around it: the gifting rituals, the seasonal magic, the playfulness of colors, and the quiet moments of indulgence.

Our brand films captured different sides of the Mon Bon universe:

  • Festive stories with sparkling lights, ribbons, and carefully wrapped boxes, highlighting macarons as the perfect gift.
  • Romantic and playful scenes with heart-shaped sweets and pastel props, designed for Valentine’s Day campaigns.
  • Seasonal shoots with spring flowers, autumn palettes, and winter coziness — each one visually tied to the limited-edition packaging.
  • Lifestyle vignettes where Mon Bon appeared on coffee tables, in boutiques, or at gatherings, reinforcing the brand’s place in everyday rituals.

Aesthetically, the videos leaned into soft daylight, pastel tones, and minimalistic styling. Close-up product shots highlighted the perfect macaron “foot,” creamy filling, and delicate shells, while wider lifestyle frames created a sense of atmosphere. Slow motion was used to draw attention to textures — a ribbon untied, a box opening, a bite breaking through the crisp shell.

On the technical side, the team worked with macro lenses for detail and prime lenses for airy lifestyle shots. Editing was deliberately gentle — no flashy cuts, just smooth transitions set to light, elegant music. The result was a series of films that felt artisanal, modern, and giftable — just like the brand itself.

Confectionery videos succeed when they sell more than the product. They sell the moment. According to HubSpot, 72% of consumers say they prefer video to learn about products, but the highest-performing videos are those that spark emotion. For Mon Bon, the videos didn’t just say “here’s a macaron,” they told stories of joy, romance, and celebration, making the brand not just a dessert, but an experience.

Brand Doula recommendations

The greatest lesson we learned is that if we could go back and start again, we would invest in branding research and brand building much earlier, and with much more focus. That would have saved us from the pitfalls of inconsistency and helped the brand grow even stronger. At the same time, those very mistakes became our teachers. The insights we gained are now the foundation of what we do at Brand Doula — helping other businesses strengthen their branding, sidestep the traps we once fell into, and build identities that truly support their success.

Final Thoughts

Co-founder of Brand Doula
Katherine Neli
Expert in brand strategy and content production, with 8 years of experience across e-commerce, SaaS, and IT.
Co-founder of Brand Doula
Maria Glazkova
Entrepreneur and brand builder with 10+ years in branding and web design, ex-founder of Mon Bon and Cocodo Brando.
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