Backstory:
I was given the opportunity to design the New Year’s cookies at the Macrina Sodo location. The Sodo location is known for being the store that sells the least amount of frosted brown sugar shortbread cookies. Where other locations made 3 dozen, Sodo would usually only make 1 dozen to sell for the week.
Thinking:
There were general designs all the cafes were supposed to use, but my manager allowed me to make up my own. The standard designs being used were all general New Year’s artifacts (New Year hats, clinking champagne glasses, Happy 2020).
My thought was if I made the cookies more correlated to Seattle it could generate more excitement.
Process:
I looked up simple pictures of the Space Needle outline. I needed to make sure that it didn’t have too much detail that pipping the design would become time consuming. But detailed enough make sure people could tell what I was making.
I tested about 3 different outlines of the Space Needle. I showed each attempt to coworkers to get a vote on which one they believed was the best, and that is what I photographed.
Outcome:
New Year’s Eve I finished frosting 24 cookies. Which is a reaching number for that store.
New Year’s Day, I was off and received messages from my boss letting me know all the cookies I had decorated had sold out in less than 3 hours. Unheard of!
I was then asked for the design timeline of decorating the cookies so the on-shift team could create more to sell.