Moțochine

Agency: VRLN
Copywriter: Ștefana Gabor Stoica
Interior Designer: Adrian Ciorgovean
Brand Designer: Paul Vîrlan
Location: Romania
Project Type: Produced
Client: Moțochine
Product Launch Location: Romania
Packaging Contents: Sweet Pastry
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Carton, paper
Printing Process: Digital printing

Moțochine is a street food sweet shop selling one product only. A round, fried and filled dough one. The thinking process for our concept started with the product and its cooking similarity with “papanași” or “gogoși”.

Truth is there isn’t a direct link to “papanași”, except for the fact that our product is fried as well. (Although, please note that the fried version of “papanași” is originally from Moldova region, while people from Transylvania, part of former Austro-Hungarian Empire, used to boil them).

We saw a connection, though – that small ball people place on top of “papanași”: has the same shape with our product. It’s like either the mini version of “papanași” or the “underestimated” part of “papanași”, just a decoration which everybody ignores, because they just want to dip into the cottage cheese and blackberry jam of papanași. Well, that small ball is called “moț” (en. tussock or tuft) in “papanași” recipes. We dived even deeper into the word “moț” and we discovered “moțochină”, a less-known synonym for “moț” and “gogoașă”, but very appealing and welcoming. People won’t say “Let’s go to X”, but “Let’s have some moțochine”.