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A pastry chef since college, the multi-talented Andrea Terrenzio began creating hand made chocolates as a hobby on the side. After falling in love with the super-delicious treats, she decided to follow her new passion and start her own business, with a name that’s rich in history and future. Terrenzio’s pays homage to her father’s Italian heritage with Dolcetta, loosely Italian for “sweet little thing.” And “Artisan Sweets” gives her room to make more than chocolate; caramels, fruit candies and pastry items. Now, two years later, Dolcetta Artisan Sweets continues to create delightful confections and spread joy among chocolate and fine food lovers in the company’s Seattle hometown, and everywhere.
Terrenzio worked with David Cole Creative on what she considered to be a small, but fun project. With products of varying sizes and shapes, from chocolate cubes, to bars and a need for different sized bon-bon boxes, the team went to work on finding a packaging solution that would align with the Dolcetta brand —luxurious and natural.
"We wanted the packaging to have a soft texture with a rich feel, something that resembles what our chocolates are about."- Andrea Terrenzio
Terrenzio said the embossed art was the key to the paper choice. She’d talked with her designer about the importance of texture, and her love of the work of paper artist Nikki McClure. The nature scenes on the Dolcetta packaging were drawn by Cole’s wife, and wanted the embossing to bring the drawings to life. After searching through paper samples, Terrenzio and Cole selected Neenah® Printable Blotter Paper for its sturdiness, soft touch and ability to perform on press. In addition to the embossing, the boxes were to be printed a solid brown with a clear foil stamp, plus a printed color system to identify the varying products.
With a variety of flavors to identify, it wasn’t cost effective for this small business to print boxes for each of flavors in each of the product lines, so the team turned back to the hand touch appeal of the Dolcetta brand — after each package is hand assembled it is hand stamped to indicate the mouth-watering flavor inside.
"We ultimately created a nice solution for a packaging system that fits our small business and varying product line. Every one of our chocolates is handcrafted, not factory made, and the design and feel of the packaging conveys that hand made brand message. Dolcetta is about finding the little joys — art, craft, nature, and delicious chocolate in a luxurious wrapper."- Terrenzio
Dolcetta Artisan Sweets further spreads the brand’s sweetness by donating 10% of sales income to Food Lifeline in support of the local community.