Case Study · A Story Rebuilt
Hilary had outgrown the website that was telling her story.
Warner's had evolved, but the site still felt like an earlier chapter. This is the story of rebuilding the experience around who the bakery had become — the brand, the story, and the custom system behind it.
01 · The bakery
Seventy-five years of celebrations.
Warner's has been hand-mixing, hand-rolling, and hand-frosting in the heart of Titusville since 1949 — the birthplace of the Smiley Cookie, and the bakery behind three generations of this town's birthdays, weddings, and Saturday-morning donuts.
But a custom bakery's real work — the cakes, the wedding consultations, the orders — lived in phone calls, notebooks, and memory. The story was continuity. The tools weren't.
02 · The problem
A template can say "a bakery." It can't say Warner's.
The earlier website did its job for an earlier chapter: it existed, it listed things, it had a button. But it looked like a thousand other bakery sites, and none of the business's real work could actually happen there. As the bakery grew into its identity — By Hil — the site stayed behind.
The Transformation
Before & after.
Before
A website that belonged to an earlier stage of the business.
The Shift
A clearer story and a stronger identity — plus custom tools shaped around how the bakery actually works.
After
A website and digital system that finally felt like Warner's — a 75-year icon, carried forward.
03 · The part that can't be copied
Look closer at the flowers.
Hilary was adopted from Korea. When the rebuild needed its signature — the one detail no template could ever carry — that was it.
I found Korean florals and redrew them by hand, vector by vector, into the artwork that now blooms quietly across her site — the hero, the cream panels, the corners of the story. Most visitors simply feel that it's beautiful. Hilary knows what it means.
Drawn for one bakery, one owner, one story.
04 · What was built
More than a website. A whole system.
I didn't build a brochure. I built the machine behind the storefront — carrying a customer from browsing to planning to booking, all in one place, all run by the owner.
- The public websiteThe story-first storefront — the Smiley, the history, the cakes — built to sound like Warner's and nobody else.
- Custom cake builderCustomers design their cake step by step instead of describing it over the phone.
- Wedding-consultation appCouples plan their consultation before they ever come in.
- Booking flow & calendarConsultations and pickups land on a calendar, not a sticky note.
- Order bookEvery order in one place — no more notebooks and memory.
- Owner-run, in one placeHilary runs all of it herself, from one spot, designed for how a custom bakery actually works.
A huge thank you to Chrissy at Forever Still Studio for bringing our website to life. I truly appreciate the time, creativity, and attention to detail she put into making it beautiful and easy to use. She has been amazing to work with — every time I came up with a new idea, she found a way to make it happen.
Don't take my word for it — that's the real announcement, exactly as Warner's posted it. "She told me, 'I can't say no to my clients!' After working with her, I believe it."
A 75-year local icon, now running on tools built just for it.