You’ve spent months or even years perfecting your craft food or beverage product. Now, it’s time to show the world what you’ve created. This is an exciting phase for small businesses, but it can also feel overwhelming! How can you portray the excellent quality of your product and give potential customers a reason to give your brand a chance? Ensuring that your product makes it off the shelves and into the hands of your ideal customers comes down to creating the right packaging and labeling for your food or beverage product.

Importance of Product Labels

Whether you sell primarily online or in stores, your product labels will create the first impression your potential customers have of your product. With so many food and beverage products on the shelves, standing out and accurately representing your brand is crucial. Create stunning food labels that set your product apart from the crowd with these five tips.

1.   Keep packaging in mind

First, consider the details of your packaging before you dive into the details of your food and beverage labels. Take into account all of the specifics of your product’s packaging, such as:

• The overall size of your product
• Packaging material
• The shape of your product package

Ensuring that your label fits well on the packaging and adheres securely to the specific material of your product package will ensure a better experience for your customers.

2.   Pick the right font

No one wants to squint or struggle to read a product label! What’s more, there are laws and regulations around food and beverage labels which require easily-legible fonts. Because your food labels need to communicate crucial facts such as allergen information, ingredient lists, serving sizes and nutrition facts, choosing the right font is extremely important.

This choice will not only impact the style of your label and the look of your branding but will also play a role in the health and safety of your consumers. Choose a font that portrays your brand personality and the attributes of your product – a snack intended for children might use a fun, exaggerated font, while a health food product may use a more classic one. Regardless of the specifics, be sure your font is easily legible so that your consumers can make informed health decisions.

3.   Select a color scheme

Just as your font should be easy to read yet expressive of your product’s purpose and personality, your color scheme should also be easy on the eyes while communicating your branding. Reference your existing marketing materials and brand presence as a baseline for your color scheme: is your website full of bright colors? Do previous releases in your product line leverage natural tones? Stay consistent in order to attract returning customers who have heard of you, seen your ads, or love your existing products!

In the same way that fonts can set the tone for food and beverage labels, colors can too. For example, a high-end wine label will likely not include neon, playful colors. At the same time, a children’s juice box should not only consist of black and white. Choose your color scheme based on the way you want your product to be perceived and how you want your customers to feel.

4.   Keep your brand in mind

Even if you’re creating food and beverage labels for a new line of products that may differ in audience from your others, strive to keep brand consistency between your labels so that your fans can follow you. Whether this means including a logo, a recognizable character of your own making, a unique font or a touching brand story, something on your label should emphasize your brand. Keep your customers returning for more by incorporating brand details into your food labels.

5.   Cater to your ideal customer

Each of the choices you make for your food and beverage labels should reflect the preferences and needs of your ideal customers. Your products and your brand as a whole is a response to a market need. Ensuring that your labels reflect the fact that you’re offering a solution to that need is crucial. As a whole, your goal in creating your labels is to quickly illustrate that your product is a better match for your ideal customer than the rest of the products on the shelves.

Standing apart from your competitors won’t come down to the loudest color scheme or the boldest font, but to the label that best convinces your customer that your product is what they’ve been looking for. Whether that’s a classy wine to impress their dinner party or a nutritious snack for their picky eight-year-olds, your label should convey that your product fits that need better than the rest.

Your high-quality product deserves a high-quality label. These tips will help you design food and beverage labels with your business goals and ideal customers in mind.

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