Web Design
Shopify Development
Custom Features
App integrations
Flodesk Email Design
2023-2024
Boucherie
Lawrence
Sefi at Boucherie Lawrence got in touch with me because they wanted to get beyond the Mile End neighbourhood to serve a wider audience they accessed during the pandemic. And as Montreal's only ethical butcher with staff that are all also cooks + connected to 2 of the city's best restaurants, Lawrence & larrys, they are primed for connecting with people across the city.
Translating the practice
So BL was born out of a practical need to supply their restaurant Lawrence with ethically sourced meat from small local producers using natural farming practices. We wanted to translate this practice onto the site, to show the people, animals and product on the site — as in, this is what it looks like to be an ethical butcher. There is nothing to hide. So we led with images of the farms, the animals, the whole animal butery that takes place in the shop, then the available products, whether meats, vegetables, prepared foods, milk, bread, wine, fermented goods, merchandise. We determined to shoot everything on the actual butcher paper, as both a creative solution for photography while also giving people online the feel of the shop. We also included elevated illustrations of the meats that had already been drawn by Sefi, reinforcing the brand as serious & earnest.
Online meets Offline
Meat, Table, Fridge emerged in our process as the core categories for the catalogue, not only because it was simple but because this is how the actual shop is set up. We wanted to have that continuity between IRL & URL, which would be familiar to or reinforced for anyone shopping both ways. All language is also very simple, as someone would talk, i.e. dairy & eggs, fruits & vegetables, dry goods. The navigation is quite minimal with not too many sub-categories, and descriptions are also written like you’re talking to someone in the shop: helpful, a bit educational, things you didn’t even think to ask about, like what to do with leftover chicken.
The Full Story
We wanted to communicate Boucherie Lawrence’s reason for being, their relationship with traditional farmers, the work of those farmers, the value of the product, but we didn’t want to do it in a heavy-handed way. So we laced this information through the site with little rotating vignettes about producers and compelling product descriptions because the reality is that people just don’t know. They don’t know where food comes from often or what goes into it and often don’t even think to ask. This is also the subject of most newsletters that go out, becoming a home for some longer storytelling.
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