One App, Two Bakeries
COBS Bread and Bakers Delight are sister brands with shared roots and distinct identities. The challenge was to build a single native mobile platform that could serve both without compromising either.
The Problem
On the surface, COBS Bread and Bakers Delight look like the same brand. Underneath, they operate as two distinct businesses with different loyalty programs, visual systems, and customer expectations. Building a single application to serve both meant designing a system flexible enough to absorb real operational differences without the seams showing.
How do you build one product that feels native to two brands when the brands themselves don't work the same way?
What We Did
Dual-Brand Design System
Built a comprehensive Figma design system architected to power both brands from a shared foundation. Each brand retained its own visual voice, naming conventions, and program identity without requiring a separate codebase to support it.
Loyalty Card as the Product Backbone
Loyalty was the heart of the engagement. We aligned early on a loyalty-style card as the experience's central element, the component everything else was built around. It gave both brands a shared interaction model while preserving the distinctly different program logic underneath.
Navigating Two Programs, One Interface
Each brand ran a meaningfully different loyalty program with its own naming conventions and reward structures. Designing for that without exposing the complexity to the user was one of the defining challenges. Every screen had to feel purpose-built, not adapted.
Technical Constraints as UX Decisions
Account deletion became an unexpectedly significant design problem. What started as a legal and technical question reshaped flows, components, and the overall journey. It was a clear example of how technical limitations drive UX decisions in ways no brief anticipates.
Phased Product Strategy
The engagement was structured in deliberate phases with loyalty as the first major milestone. E-commerce was scoped and positioned as the logical next step, now actively underway following a successful Phase 1 launch.
Outcomes
Live on iOS and Android, Phase 1 shipped on schedule
Designed across both brands from a single design system
Downloads on Google Play since launch
E-commerce underway two months after Phase 1 launch
The design system became more than a deliverable. It gave the client a clear picture of the complexity they were managing across two brands and a scalable framework to carry it forward. The loyalty launch shipped on schedule. The app is live and the roadmap is moving.
What I Learned
Designers often want to own the entire experience. The reality is we work on teams where technical constraints, legal requirements, and business logic all shape design decisions. Learning to balance what you want to do with what can actually ship is as important as the craft itself. This project made me better at both.