In 2025, California's food scene is going through a tough season. Restaurants are closing one after another: San Francisco's Michelin-starred Osito shut its doors in May, alongside local favourites like Teta Nahla, Lilah, and Bear's Lair. Even Los Angeles landmark Cole's French Dip, serving customers for 117 years, is preparing to close for good this fall.
Yet while many cafés and eateries are fading out, Kristina Petrosian is moving in the opposite direction. A Los Angeles-based Creative Director and Marketing Strategist widely recognized for pioneering the use of edible design as a medium for visual communication and brand engagement, she took over Modern Bite, a small cookie shop, and turned it into a thriving half-a-million-dollar brand. As the creative lead of a specialized design studio, she has developed a unique methodology that transforms food into a strategic storytelling tool—blending multisensory experience, design thinking, and marketing psychology. Her work has powered high-profile campaigns across industries, including technology, entertainment, and fashion, helping brands create memorable, emotionally resonant experiences through edible formats. With a background in visual communication and a proven track record of driving campaign success and business growth, Kristina is considered a leader in the emerging field of experiential and sensory branding.
For many small food businesses struggling with closures, this shows that survival isn't only about cutting costs or reinventing menus but about building a brand strong enough to carry you through market downturns.
Shaping Taste, Sparking Feeling
Evidently, great food alone isn't enough to keep customers coming back. What makes a business thrive is recognition, identity, and a felt sense of belonging. And the bridge to that connection is emotion.
Studies consistently show that 95% of purchase decisions are driven by emotion, not logic. Kristina noticed that in the world of food, this effect is even more potent. "Visual cues like colour and shape directly affect how people perceive taste and form flavour expectations," she says. "For example, our brains tend to match round shapes with sweetness, while angular forms evoke sourness or bitterness."
For restaurateurs and food entrepreneurs, this means design choices aren't just decorative. Instead, they directly influence how customers perceive taste and whether they return for more.
This insight became the cornerstone of her branding and marketing strategy. By turning cookies into canvases, she taps into those subconscious triggers. Seen through Kristina's branding lens, a cookie transforms from a simple treat into a memory, an association, a talking point that keeps a brand alive in someone's mind.
Kristina adds, "In addition to creativity, we approach every project with love and creativity. That's what turns a simple order into something memorable."
Cookies as Branding Tools
The idea of "selling emotion" might sound abstract, but Kristina Petrosian's portfolio shows how concrete it can be. Global companies have turned to her for campaigns where cookies became the medium of communication.
"Tasty treatments can become a way for clients to share emotions with their audiences," Kristina explains. "It makes their branding feel warmer and more personal."
One example was Instagram's private creator event at VidCon. When another vendor failed to meet the creative brief, Modern Bite stepped in under tight deadlines, producing edible designs shaped like Instagram's logo. The cookies became a centerpiece of the event and spread quickly across social media, with influencers and celebrity guests sharing the visuals under the hashtag #InstagramxVidCon. The campaign proved how edible branding can drive both visibility and engagement.
Google's innovation team requested cookies shaped like cars and lobsters, using them to add a playful edge to internal projects. Luxury automakers Ferrari and Mercedes have also used their branded cookies in Beverly Hills showrooms, handing them out with coffee to potential buyers as a small gesture that leaves a lasting impression.
Even in the cultural sector, the concept proved powerful. During the immersive Van Gogh exhibitions in Los Angeles, visitors could purchase cookies printed with the artist's paintings. With more than 600,000 people attending, the cookies became not just a snack but a collectible piece of the experience.
"What really keeps our clients is trust," Kristina says. "We rebuild the relationship by being reliable, transparent, and creative. Clients come back because they know we will deliver every time. That trust is what allows us to survive when so many others don't."
From tech giants to luxury brands to art shows, the projects highlight the same truth: in Kristina's strategy, cookies act as branding tools: through emotional connection, they spark conversation, and carry a message far beyond the first bite.
A Bite of Innovation
If cookies can carry a message, why not let them carry a campaign? That's the thinking behind one of Kristina Petrosian's boldest moves: integrating digital tools into edible branding.
Some clients now ask for QR codes printed directly on cookies, scannable links that take customers to promotions, product launches, or social media campaigns. It's a simple idea, but one that merges the offline and online worlds in a way that feels playful rather than pushy. "People are more likely to scan something when it comes with a smile and a bite of sugar," Kristina says.
The approach has already caught on. Shopkick, a shopping rewards platform, ordered QR-code cookies to boost engagement. Instagram used them in a branded activation. In both cases, what could have been another forgettable flyer or ad became a novelty people wanted to photograph, share, and, eventually, eat.
For brands, this kind of edible branding shows how food can bridge offline and online worlds, creating shareable moments that extend customer engagement beyond the first bite.
By experimenting with formats like these, Kristina is proving that edible branding isn't just about visuals but about creating multi-channel experiences. The cookie becomes both a physical object and a digital gateway, blurring the line between product and promotion.
The Payoff of Selling Emotion
The numbers tell their own story. When Kristina started working on the cookie shop, it was valued at just $35,000. Today, thanks to her branding strategy, the business generates around $500,000 a year, a fifteenfold increase in only five years.
That kind of growth didn't happen by chasing food trends or undercutting competitors. It came from positioning cookies as more than baked goods. Each collaboration added to the brand's reputation, attracting new clients and higher-profile projects.
The result is not just financial success, but resilience. While many food businesses in California are shrinking or shutting down, Kristina's has grown steadily, proving that a strong brand identity can protect even the smallest company against wider market pressures.
Kristina's story underlines a simple truth: in today's market, survival isn't about the product alone. You can bake the best cookie in town, but without a strong brand identity, it risks being forgotten. What makes a business resilient is the ability to spark emotion, to give people a sense of connection and belonging.
For entrepreneurs, that means looking beyond the surface, treating design, packaging, and even the smallest details as part of the brand experience. In Kristina's case, it turned a struggling bakery into a six-figure business and a trusted partner for some of the world's most recognizable companies.
