A popular chain of cafes which serve the bagel in all its possible avatars, Bagel’s Café wanted to revitalize its look along with their menu offerings. Studio Code, in close collaboration with the client and graphic designer helped conceptualize and build the visual and spatial look of the new Bagel’s café in the up and coming Meher Chand market.

The area available, a narrow dark corner site barely 10 feet wide and 28 feet long with a single opening in front posed a challenge. The café had to seat a minimum of 12 people with a fully functional kitchen setup, storage and product display.

Three large windows opening onto the adjacent service road were created to illuminate and visually expand the space. At the entrance, a long sweep of sculptural counter binds the diverse pieces of large kitchen equipment and functions as product display, concealed storage, pickup and pay areas. Additionally, the finish of pale yellow glass reflects light and shadows deeper into the small café to make feel larger. The flooring matches and extends the counter finish to the whole café creating a mellow backdrop to the bright wall artwork of food. The furniture was kept simple and all in white with pops of colour picked up from the wall artwork in its cushions.

Large pieces of kitchen equipment occupy available floor space, requiring judicious planning of furniture and storage. We devised strips of concealed and open storage to match the counter finish below with mirror in between to provide spatial scale and visual interest. Accommodating everything from small kitchen equipment, crockery, cutlery, ingredients to packing boxes, private belongings and merchandise, the dummy storage panels also concealed electrical switches, stabilizers and other equipment paraphernalia.

The Meher Chand outlet was a pilot to test the new look of Bagel’s Café and we are in the process of switching the look of all existing outlets to match the new one.