Pilot 01 · On test
All the pilotsA pilot for
Still warm.
Fill a box the way you would at the counter, and find the nearest cookie still warm from the oven: five working scenes for their website, designed and built unasked.
- For
- Ben's Cookies
- Scenes
- Five, each one working
- Made
- October 2026, in Bath
- Status
- On test, made unasked
An idea, made unasked. Ben's Cookies is not a client and has not seen or approved this. The name, the logo and the cookies are theirs.
Pilot 01 · On test
Still warm.
Press play and the pilot plays itself on the phone: 5 scenes, each the working prototype, with a fingertip doing the pressing. About 45 seconds. Choose a scene to jump to it, or try it yourself at any time.
The idea
The counter, in your pocket.
The thing everyone loves about Ben's Cookies is a cookie from the counter, still warm, chosen by eye from a tray piled high, with the chocolate still melting in the middle. Every shop bakes all day, and that is rather the point.
A website cannot hand you a warm cookie. It can do the next two best things: let you fill a box the way you would at the counter, and send you to the nearest shop when something has just come out of the oven.
Why them
Chunks, not chips, since 1983.
Helge Rubinstein wrote The Chocolate Book in 1981, came up with her cookie in 1983, and the next year opened a little red kiosk in Oxford's Covered Market, where it is still baking today. The boy in the logo is her son, Ben, drawn by her friend Quentin Blake. There are now some ninety shops in eleven countries, one of them in Union Passage, a few minutes from my studio, and the cookies are still made the same way: chunks, not chips, 85 grams each, baked in every shop all day long. This pilot is a thank you, of sorts, for a good many of them.
The scenes
Five ideas, each one working.
Each is a working page on the phone above, not a picture of one. Watch any scene played, or take the phone and try them all yourself.
Scene 1: The counter
Fill a box the way you would in the shop.
The shop opens on the counter: sixteen cookies on their trays, and the open box below, drawn in clean line with a place for every cookie. Seven in a Small Box, fifteen in a Large, four or eight in a tin.
Tap a cookie and it crosses into the next place; tap it in the box and it goes back to its tray. The box stays in view as a slim strip at the foot of the screen, every place filled or waiting, the two free ones marked on us. When it is full, the lid closes and the twine is tied.
What it would doThe box being filled is always theirs, always in view, and never in the way of the cookies.
Scene 2: Find a warm one
What has just come out of the oven, at the shop nearest you.
Each shop gets a page that says what you want to know before you set off: open now and until when, how far it is, and what is warm.
Behind the counter, a tablet by the oven has a button for each tray. When a tray comes out, a press, and the shop's page says so. The home page then offers the nearest warm one, five minutes' walk away.
What it would doIt turns the website into a reason to go to a shop, at the moment the cookie is at its best.
Scene 3: Today's bake
Delivery or collection, then every day with its price, before anything else.
The order starts with how the box reaches you. Delivery goes by DPD: each box is baked in the first batch of the morning, posted the same morning, and with you the morning after, and the page shows those three stops before you choose. Collection is free, from the nearest shop or any other, packed from that day's trays and kept by the till until closing.
Then the day: a calendar of the coming fortnight, each day with its price, and how much of that day's bake is left, because the kitchen really does bake to a daily limit. A box for someone else adds a card, written in the kitchen in the hand they already use, and no prices in the box.
What it would doNobody reaches the checkout to find a price or a day they did not expect.
Scene 4: Every cookie has a character
Sixteen flavours, each with its own line, and what is in it on the back.
Their flavour pages already give every cookie a personality. Here each becomes a card with its own line, and turns over, as a card does in the hand, for what it contains and its nutrition, from their own table.
The filters go by taste, never by allergy: one kitchen bakes them all, so no cookie is safe for an egg, milk, nut, peanut, soya or sulphite allergy, and the page says so first.
What it would doThe voice they already have gets a stage, and anyone with an allergy finds the answer in one turn.
Scene 5: The city tins
A tin for every city with a Ben's.
A packaging idea: a collectable gift tin for each of their British shops' cities, each lid a line drawing of its own street in their red on their stone. The kiosk in Oxford's Covered Market, the fanlights of Union Passage, the Piazza in Covent Garden.
Online, the tins stand on a shelf you slide along, with your own city first.
What it would doA keepsake people carry home and keep, and a reason for a visitor to buy one in every city.
Every scene works
Take the phone and fill a box, choose a day, write the card, turn the cards over and slide the tins along. Nothing is charged and nothing is sent.
The thinking
What was decided, and why.
- Started with the warm cookie, not the website. The best thing about them happens at a counter. The pilot sends people to it, and brings the counter to the phone.
- Their logo exactly, and nothing drawn in Blake's hand. Ben is someone's son and someone else's drawing. The pilot draws boxes, tins and streets, never him.
- Delivery first. A price and a day found only at the end is the commonest reason a basket is left.
- The box always in view, never in the way. A fifth of the screen at most, and it is their box, drawn place by place.
- Filters by taste, never by allergy. Their own table says one kitchen bakes them all. A filter that promised no nuts would be a promise they cannot keep.
- Nothing that pretends to take money. It is a pilot. The last step says so, and nothing is charged or sent.
Get in touch
Would you like one?
If you are at Ben's Cookies and would like to see more of it, or you would like a pilot for your own brand, or a website made with this much care, fill in the coupon. It comes straight to me, and I reply within one working day.
Or email hello@analogue.media.