Drinking coffee in the city
Lusso
The client
Lusso is a premium coffee brand in Korea, that was familiar with growing, roasting and grinding beans, but new to serving up coffee in its own store.
The brief
We were asked by Lusso to design a flagship store concept that delivered a more inspiring coffee experience than the larger, global coffee chains in Seoul.
The goal was to tell the Lusso brand story and articulate the heritage and provenance that it was known for. More than that, we were tasked with creating a unique place to drink coffee in the heart of the city.
We were also given a loose brief to source, find and ship modern mid-century European furniture over to Korea for the shop. If the furniture had a story as well as being a design talking point, then even better.
What we delivered
We created a sensory experience where the coffee is the hero; a comfortable environment that is premium, but not exclusive.
Highlights include an in-house coffee roasting machine that whets customers’ appetites whilst they wait for their coffee. Meanwhile, a ‘coffee bar on tracks’ brings theatre to the customer experience, doubling up as a training station for baristas and a place to educate customers.
In terms of styling and sourcing furniture, we found lovely rosewood and leather seats from an old cinema, internal lead windows from Chelsea Barracks and some stools from an old Singer sewing machine factory, to give an eclectic, but styled, vintage feel.
