Sissle & Daughters
A warm, unpretentious brand and new website for a family-owned Portland cheese shop, built to carry it into a second location.
Sissle & Daughters Cheesemongers & Grocers is a family-owned, cut-to-order cheese shop and specialty grocer in Portland, Maine. Owners Mary Chapman and Will Sissle first opened it as The Cheese Shop of Portland.
The shop had grown up alongside the family. With two daughters, Hattie and Tess, and a second location on the way, the owners wanted a brand that reflected who they had become.
They are serious about food, but the shop has always felt welcoming rather than precious. The new brand needed to carry that expertise without the intimidation that often comes with specialty food.
We started with strategy, then let it guide every design decision.
- Brand workshop. We led a collaborative session with the owners to name the shop's core attributes and define its voice.
- Positioning and tagline. That work produced the tagline "Good Food & Good Company," which says the product is serious and the room is not.
- Visual identity. We designed a primary logo pairing a hand-drawn illustration of Hattie and Tess with a modern wordmark, a palette of bistro blues and warm yellows, custom icons, a signature doodle pattern and a rustic French stripe.
- A new website. We designed and built a new site that carries the brand online and introduces the shop, its people and its offerings.
- Rollout. We applied the system across packaging, product labels, bags, signage and in-store collateral.
The identity is playful and timeless at once, and flexible enough to show up consistently from a cheese label to a storefront sign to the new website. It was built to carry the brand into a second shop.
Every deadline was met, including projects added partway through. In a verified Clutch review, the owners rated the work 5.0 for quality, service and schedule, and reported very positive feedback from customers.
We really appreciated the holistic approach to the rebrand. … We never had to question whether deliverables would be ready on time.
Naming what a business is not can be as useful as naming what it is. Sissle & Daughters is not a temple to cheese, so the logo is a portrait of two kids instead of a wedge of cheddar.
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