Case Study
Maple Leaf Foods
Transforming Maple Leaf Foods’ brands for the modern age
Maple Leaf Foods has provided Canadian families with high-quality, great-tasting protein products for over 100 years under leading brands such as Maple Leaf, Schneiders, and Greenfield Natural Meats. With 10+ brands, Maple Leaf Foods needed a harmonious ecosystem to manage all websites seamlessly.
Brands We Serve
Overview
With brands scattered across different hosts, platforms, and vendors, Maple Leaf Foods needed a solution that would allow them to consolidate all their properties under one roof while maintaining each brand’s unique identity.
Because of their dispersed system, Maple Leaf Foods wanted to resolve considerable technical debt associated with updating or creating new sites. Trew Knowledge proposed a consolidated ecosystem on a WordPress Multisite network that would provide Maple Leaf Foods with a harmonious, scalable, and secure architecture for all brands, improving operational efficiency.
what we delivered
Simple, scalable solutions for a large corporate enterprise
01
A New Maple Leaf Foods Website
We launched the new Maple Leaf Foods corporate website in April 2022. It combines clean design and unparalleled customized solutions to support the company’s editorial needs and provide the user with accessible communication and easy-to-navigate pages.
02
Leveraging the Block Editor
We transitioned Maple Leaf Foods from their previous website builder to the WordPress block editor. The block editor allows us to develop different components once but share them across multiple sites with minor adjustments that will enable the teams to maintain their brand identities. These components—or “blocks”—can build robust layouts that create a brand impact while the core functionality remains unchanged.
03
Streamlining the Process of Building and Updating New Sites
The WordPress Multisite architecture supports future website additions, making content creation even more intuitive and easy to share across sites. It also gives the Maple Leaf Foods team flexibility when creating customized, creative designs that fit the more prominent brands and stand out as a specific sub-brand.
04
Prioritizing the User Experience with Siteimprove
Working towards the well-being and nutrition of Canadian families is a core value that drives Maple Leaf Foods. To ensure their customers have a positive experience while on their websites, we integrated Siteimprove, a SaaS solution that helps improve accessibility, SEO, and performance issues. By leveraging this tool, each Maple Leaf Foods site can continue to improve, mitigate broken links, and deliver an exceptional user experience.
05
Automatically Generating Nutritional Facts
Salsify is the leading product experience management platform (PXM) solutions provider. We developed a custom integration that allows Maple Leaf Foods to dynamically pull nutritional facts. This seamless integration ensures that nutritional information is always accurate and available to consumers.
Challenges
Creating a harmonious, complementary ecosystem for a large family of brands
Trew Knowledge worked with diverse partners across 7+ brands to create a repeatable, scalable, and flexible ecosystem to allow for accurate brand representation. With multiple sets of brand guidelines, stakeholders, and current systems, we worked to ensure that all teams were on board with the vision and created a WordPress ecosystem that allowed each brand to live in one place. Now, Maple Leaf Foods is at an advantage when they want to create a new website, as they have all the necessary building blocks to quickly and easily build new sites while providing their users with a cohesive experience across their brands.
01.
Maple Leaf
We created a website aligned with the brand’s values and goals, allowing them to stay in contact with their customers. The site architecture is easy to update and highly efficient, so the Maple Leaf Foods team will never miss an opportunity to launch new products and promotions on time.
02.
Schneiders
One of Maple Leaf Foods’ flagship brands, Schneiders, has offered delicious-tasting, premium meat products since 1890. Using the WordPress Block Editor, we created a website for Schneiders that fits cohesively with the Maple Leaf Foods family while also reflecting its rich history and unique brand guidelines.
03.
Greenfield Natural Meat Co.
A meat brand with a purpose, Greenfield Natural Meat Co. was founded in 2015 with the goal of making sustainable meat attainable. Greenfield Natural Meat Co. uses free-range sows, meat that is never treated with antibiotics, and has worked to reduce its carbon emissions.
04.
LightLife
Lightlife, established in 1979, is renowned for its commitment to simple, clean ingredients and high-quality plant-based products. Along with the updated website, we created a landing page to support their “This is Tempehfy” campaign. We provided the LightLife team with a scalable and maintainable system for future updates while empowering their admins by giving them greater control over their CMS.
05.
Grab ’n Snack
Perfectly portioned snacks that pack a protein punch—that’s what you get with the Grab ‘n Snack brand. Their ready-to-go snacks have 9+ grams of meat protein, leaving you full and ready to take on your day.
06.
Mitchell’s
Established in the early 1940s, Mitchell’s aims to bring crowd-pleasing meals you can feel good about eating to tables across Canada. They believe great food is meant to be shared to build connections and create memories with those we love.
07.
Mighty Protein
High-protein snacks made simple. Mighty Protein delivers clean, convenient fuel with 12 grams of complete protein per chicken stick. Made from chicken raised without antibiotics, each stick has zero sugar, only 110 calories, and a bold flavour in every bite. Available in Original, Buffalo, and BBQ, Mighty Protein is your go-to snack for pure protein and pure power.
08.
Canada Packers
Canada Packers carries forward the legacy of excellence in Canadian pork production, now reimagined for a global, sustainable future. As a newly independent company spun off from Maple Leaf Foods, Canada Packers builds on decades of leadership in pork processing and value-added protein. It focuses on responsibly produced pork for global markets, driven by innovation, integrity, and respect for the land and animals.
09.
Musafir
A flavour journey inspired by South Asia. Musafir brings bold, authentic taste to everyday meals with protein-forward options made for modern life. From spiced chicken bites to paneer-filled veggie patties, each recipe blends traditional ingredients with convenient, ready-to-cook formats.
The Results
Maple Leaf Foods is now using a cohesive WordPress Multisite ecosystem, allowing them to create new custom sites quickly and efficiently using the block editor. Thanks to the easy-to-use, component-based system, their technical debt has been significantly reduced, and the time to market for new sites and landing pages has decreased.
20
new websites developed.
80%
faster go-to-market for branded websites
9
sub-brands supported.
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