The challenge
Hospitality margins are made of covers per square metre, and the client needed every seat the plan could carry. Pack a small room that tightly and it starts to feel like a waiting area rather than somewhere you linger.
Commercial · London
Commercial fit-out — hospitality
A neighbourhood café and deli fit-out — sage panelled walls, a long service counter, exposed stone and bentwood chairs. Designed to seat as many covers as the licence allows without ever feeling like a canteen. Photographed on completion.
Hospitality margins are made of covers per square metre, and the client needed every seat the plan could carry. Pack a small room that tightly and it starts to feel like a waiting area rather than somewhere you linger.
Seating was mixed rather than repeated — a banquette run against the panelling, loose bentwood chairs, and a couple of round tables that break the grid — so the room fills densely but never reads as rows. Full-height sage panelling and a stripped stone wall give the eye texture at close range, which is what makes a small room feel intimate instead of tight.
Maximum covers, minimum canteen. A room the neighbourhood sits in for an hour, not ten minutes.
Warm recessed downlights over circulation, kept low and warm over the tables; the display counter is lit brightest, because in a deli the food is the signage.
