Yummy Cupcakes removed cupcakes’ ubiquitous liners and began offering Cupcakes in a Jar™, cake and icing layered in a glass jar.

How do you turn a simple cupcake into a coveted gift? How do you make sure a bread buyer can tell the white from the whole wheat without a second glance? And how can you go green without putting your business in the red? For a growing number of retail and specialty wholesale bakeries, redesigned packaging is the answer.

Yummy Cupcakes, with stores in Burbank and Santa Monica, Calif., has taken its eponymous edibles not only outside the box, but also outside the traditional paper cup. The company's Cupcake in a Jar™, which consists of layers of cupcakes, icing, fillings and toppings in a mason jar, has been a huge success since the bakery introduced the product in March 2006, according to Executive Chef Tiffini Soforenko.

“They became so popular that we now carry them in our bakeshops every day,” she says.

Yummy Cupcakes keeps a handful of flavor combinations on each stores' front counter as visual samples and to encourage impulse purchases. The bakery's pastry chef also will make them to order. The jars are available in single ($5.25), double ($8.50) and family ($11.50) sizes.

Another popular signature item is the Cupcake on a Stick™ ($5.50), a candy apple-looking creation that is double-dipped in chocolate, rolled in a variety of toppings and packaged in recyclable grab-and-go bags or fancy boxes with a bow for gift-giving. Cupcake Truffles™-half dollar-sized white and chocolate cupcakes dipped in chocolate or buttercream icing and rolled in nuts, sprinkles or candy — are packaged six to a small kraft box to resemble their candy counterparts ($9.50).

Jami Curl, owner of Saint Cupcake, with two stores in Portland, Ore., invested less than $10,000 to design and produce a box with special die-cut inserts for a recently introduced Cupcake Shop do-it-yourself kit. The box has cut-out nests for three ($10), six ($17.50) or 12 ($35) wrapped cupcakes of the customers' choosing and lidded corn-based condiment cups of icing. The kit also includes heat-sealed packets of sprinkles and other toppings and wooden icing spreaders. Candles and cupcake picks are optional additions. The kits may be ordered from Saint Cupcake's website and in its stores. Curl estimates that in an average week, the company sells at least 400 of the kits.

Market of Choice has gone green with its packaging, including paper baking moulds and corn-based plastic clamshells.

In its three New York locations, Magnolia Bakery captures grab-and-go gifters by offering a dozen vanilla and chocolate buttercream-iced mini cupcakes in colorful egg carton-like containers. Available in pink, green and blue cartons tied with a tulle bow, the cupcakes — positioned as a thank you gift — are priced at $20, $2 more than the same number of minis without the fanciful presentation.

Easy identifiers

With more than two dozen product SKUs, New Haven, Conn.-based Chabaso Bakery, a specialty wholesale artisan bread bakery, wanted to find a way to create packaging that would help shoppers instantly indentify flavors, provide visual continuity for new products and reinforce the bakery's already strong brand identity. Early last year, Chabaso introduced the first packaging redesign in its 14-year history, and while not a drastic departure from the original, the new look is definitely distinctive, says Dorothy Radlicz, director of marketing.

“Based on our consumer research, we knew that we had some very strong brand equity in our brown bag, company name, logo and overall packaging appearance,” she says.

To retain that brand equity, Chabaso kept its basic brown kraft bag, which Radlicz describes as a reflection of the company's down-to-earth philosophy, but has amped up the graphics with ribbon-like bands color-coded to each bread variety as well as whimsical, flavor-specific illustrations. For example, the Rainin' Grains ciabatta bag sports a blue flavor ribbon and an illustration of grains raining onto open umbrellas; the roasted garlic ciabatta's ribbon is red, as is the illustration of the featured ingredient.