Award Winning Grinders Flagship Store
Designing the future of a coffee legacy.
Grinders new concept store front at 11 Logan Road in Brisbane is everything good design should be, both beautiful and functional.
The rise and rise of the specialist coffee café experience has been a continuous evolution in the Australia café market. From small independent spots to larger multi store offerings, the immersive coffee experience is now a staple of the Australian culinary landscape. Grinders Coffee Brisbane is the meeting point of beauty and function to create what all good design should, an impactful, memorable experience.
What makes the newest Grinders Coffee retail offering different is that it’s not just another pretty face designed to compete among all this. Grinders new concept store front at 11 Logan Road in Brisbane is everything good design should be, both beautiful and functional. Blending soft tones and custom finishes with first of kind coffee making technology to engineer that perfect blend.
It’s a design exercise in telling the Grinders story through experience. The training area has opened the number of students that can participate in their coffee immersion programs and as such, opens the opportunity for Grinders to bring that story to more people through the product itself. After all, it is all about the coffee. Grinders Brisbane is what happens when you take the foundation of a 50 plus year old company obsessed with perfecting coffee and mix it with the latest technology in the science of making the perfect cup. A space created to invite clients in to learn how to recreate that experience for themselves. It blurs the lines between history, product, service and customer in an environment that is both timeless and on the edge of new design.
'“We kept asking the question ‘how can we bring the end user on this journey? How can they experience the Grinders story?”
Jacob Burke, Founder and Creative Director of BEST. lead the team behind the design, guiding them in taking a lessor interest in the market competition to focus instead on the experience the space will create for customers.
“What’s remarkable about the Grinders Brisbane space is not just that all aspects of the end customer experience have been taken into consideration but that within each part of that solution as designers, we kept asking the question ‘how can we bring the end user on this journey? How can they experience the Grinders story?’. This translated to us changing the way we see the space. When Grinders asks for a training center, we think, how can we get more people behind each machine so the Grinders key partners can learn together in a collaborative environment? Grinders wants to stand out, so we ask ourselves, how can we service them while creating a space that is always comfortable for the end user to sit and have coffee with friends. This how we created a beautiful, relevant and liveable space.”
Grinders Brisbane features custom design light fittings, custom created cabinetry and a design that was centred around respecting the newly restored base build architecture of the historic building itself.
“We felt respecting the building itself, with its rich history restored and open on display was a key consideration of the design and we wanted to draw a line within the space that led the customer’s eye to wander up and into to grand beauty of the building.” said Burke
The heritage building and it’s ceilings
Draw a line they did. The only aesthetic change made to the original wall is the light coat of ‘baby doll’ pink that stops at the 3.3m mark and leaves the soaring ceilings in their original restored form untouched. The heritage scape of the building is the stage and Grinders have brought the props to create a theatrical experience that respects and values its history and raw beauty.
“The restoration by Kirk Architects stripped away anything that has been done since the end of the Second World War and we wanted to stay true to that”. In a time of mass production, custom artesian fittings are the new luxury. “The custom lighting is a great example of this artisan contribution” said Burke.
“They were hand made by a local trades person who was originally brought on for the plumbing, who turns out to be an incredible lighting artist who then created the exact look and feel we were looking for. Our open approach to design, and real appreciation for artisan talent makes room for them to come into our projects and contribute to the experiences we create.”
“There is a depth of satisfaction knowing that we could create a design that respects the history and raw nature of the building, the core functional and brand needs of our client and still create an artisan, customised immersive experience for the end user” The specialist coffee market is no longer the new trend, the market has had time to mature and with that, substance, experience and leading edge technology in how you deliver an experience to match at every touchpoint of design. The experienced customer expects more than just beauty, they desire a memorable experience. “We are here to create a design that is on brand for our client and really leaves a mark. Keeping that front and centre in the design process results in our client being given the chance to create the future of the market they are specialists in”.
Design Team:
Jacob Burke – Creative Director
Tom Debenham – Lead, Interior Design
George Thompson – Lead, Industrial Design
Geoff Ashmore – Interior Architecture
Tom Madden – Construction Management
