Spicin Foods (formerly Original Juan Specialty Foods) is a sauce manufacturing company located in Kansas City, KS. The company was sold, renamed, and rebranded as Spicin Foods in 2018. Spicin Foods manufactures a variety of specialty sauces that it markets and sells under its own branded lines. 

One of Spicin Foods’ legacy brands, Pain is Good, is a line of hot sauces and salsas. The Pain is Good brand was created in the late 1990s, and over the years, it has developed a cult following of chili heads (hot sauce lovers). The existing Pain is Good packaging features their iconic “screaming faces” logos and handwritten-style word mark. The screaming faces are illustrations based on photographs of three men screaming. The Pain is Good label designs have changed over time, but they always incorporate one or all of the screaming faces and the Pain is Good word mark. 

In 2019, Spicin Foods was launching a line of three new spicy barbecue sauces under the Pain is Good brand. They wanted the label designs for their new sauces to include the original Pain is Good logo faces and word mark but also set the sauces apart as something new, fun, and exciting. Their team asked us to create new food packaging designs for their sauces, and we were glad to help with this fun packaging design project.  

Working with a line that has so much brand equity is a privilege, and our first step was to research previous and existing Pain is Good label designs. We wanted the new look to compliment the existing sauces in the line and retain the brand’s standards, but we were also granted plenty of wiggle room to get creative. 

Next, we conducted shelf studies to see where the sauce would sit on the shelf alongside competing barbecue sauces. Once we had a good idea of what a new Pain is Good sauce label should like, we got to work. We created and presented three potential label design directions, and the Spicin Foods team unanimously picked one. We followed government guidelines for food packaging and Spicin Foods’ manufacturing standards to ensure the labels would not only look fantastic, but that they would meet our client’s and “the man’s” standards. We tweaked the label designs and then applied them to the three different sauce flavors.

The clients and their customers were so pleased with the new label designs, that they asked us to help update the entire line of Pain is Good hot sauces. But we’ll save that for another case study.