Case study · The Brickhouse Smokery
Brickhouse Smokery
Packaging and an e-commerce website for The Brickhouse Smokery, a family meat-smoking business in Spruce Grove, Alberta, built to make their jerky and pepperoni stand out.
01 — Context
Four generations of smoking meat, no BS
The Brickhouse Smokery makes beef jerky, pepperoni, sausage, family packs and freezer meals in Spruce Grove, Alberta. Meat-making runs four generations deep in the Wilhauk family, and the product is the kind people drive across town for.
Brickhouse wanted the brand to look as good as the product tastes. They asked us for packaging design that would grab people at the counter and an e-commerce website that would let them order online, run fundraisers and tell the family story.
02 — Packaging
Black bags that stop people at the counter
The packaging had to work hard in a crowded cooler. We went black, with a rugged, distressed BRICKHOUSE wordmark and a big BS stamp, so the bags read from across the room and own the brand's cheeky line: a damn good product, without the BS.
Each flavour gets its own colour band (blue for classic, orange for cheese, green for dill, red for hot), so customers can find their favourite at a glance. Product photography fills the bottom of every bag, and the back carries bilingual English and French copy with icons for 100% Canadian made, handcrafted, gluten-free and keep refrigerated.
03 — E-commerce
An online shop that makes the product the hero
The website carries the packaging's attitude online: black backgrounds, torn-paper edges, big condensed headlines and close-up photography of the product. It is built to sell, with a filterable shop, product pages with allergen information and quick badges (made in Alberta, handcrafted, gluten-free, keep refrigerated), and a simple cart.
Beyond the shop, the site handles the parts of the business that bring people back: fundraising packs for schools and teams, a giving-back program, wild game processing, store locations and the local vendors Brickhouse stocks.
We cover what a food shop needs in e-commerce website design, and why custom beats a template in why template websites hurt your brand.
04 — Story
A family story worth telling
People buy from people. The Our Story page traces the family's history, which starts in 1929, and the homepage puts four generations of Wilhauks front and centre, from an archive photo of Norm Wilhauk at work to Grayson, the fourth generation in the business.
It is the same principle we write about in storytelling through web design. See more food and beverage work, including Kunaferia and Quiznos.
What we delivered
- 01Packaging designA bold, bilingual bag system with colour-coded flavours.
- 02E-commerce websiteShop, product pages, cart and checkout.
- 03Website designA rugged, product-first design that matches the packaging.
- 04DevelopmentA custom build the team can manage.
- 05Fundraising & givingPages for fundraising packs and community giving.
- 06Story & locationsOur Story, team, locations and local vendors.