Case Study
From digital stores to real-life retail.
Storyville Coffee Company | Retail Experience
Category
- Retail & Hospitality
Expertise
- Brand Expression
- Competitive Analysis
- Design Language System
- Design Visualization & Storytelling
- Interior Design & CMF
- Prototyping & Simulation
- User & Stakeholder Interviews
To extend its brand from online to in-store, Storyville Coffee Company partnered with Teague to design a flagship café and retail store in the U.S. coffee mecca of Seattle.
Challenge
Exciting a saturated market.
Brimming with coffee enthusiasts and several homegrown-turned-renowned brands, Seattle is a saturated market with high local standards and tough competition. Storyville Coffee Company started as a local roaster and online retailer promising “the perfect cup” from its premium beans. Ready to extend its brand into a retail concept, Storyville called on Teague to create a compelling in-store experience in the heart of Pike Place Market.
APPROACH
Observe, listen, & learn.
Storyville is devoted to the art and craft of coffee roasting; its customers, local aficionados willing to pay a premium. Our goal was not only to design a retail concept synonymous with Storyville’s brand promise but to elevate and enrich the total brand experience with a 360-approach to environmental design. We established three tenets of strategic framework:
Stay True to Our Roots
The concept had to be brewed from Storyville’s origins while charting a path for a new tribe of coffee drinkers. We conducted a brand audit and comparative brand analysis to identify key customer characteristics and generate user personas. The team then created mood boards to explore materials, finishes, and elements that would capture a quintessential Pacific Northwest aesthetic and emanate brand DNA.
Earn Trust
Instead of a retail space charting its online presence, Storyville had established its brand online. Ensuring transparency and trustworthiness through a mergence of the online and physical environment was key. We created a series of interior concepts designed to lift the curtain on behind-the-scenes operations and provide technological cohesion throughout customer touchpoints.
Create A Flexible Customer Journey
For enhanced customer experience, the team wanted flexibility across customer segments throughout the retail and digital environment. Central to the approach was observational research and interviews with stakeholders, as well as external industry experts. We studied, segmented, and mapped customer journeys to evaluate areas of overlap and distinction.
SOLUTION
A thoughtful approach to every customer touchpoint.
Storyville’s flagship cafe in Pike Place Market extends from the brand’s culinary strengths and defines expectations of a differentiated experience. A thoughtful approach to every customer touchpoint culminated in a multi-purpose store layout integrating technology, community-driven design, and powerful brand story.
The coffee bar is the interior’s crown jewel, designed to emulate a coffee roasting machine—a nod to Storyville’s roots. A vector of traffic flow, the bar’s cylindrical form-factor, and unusually low height foster transparency between baristas and customers. The area below the counter is equally considered to ensure ease of movement for Storyville’s baristas and maximize space for under-counter storage. The structure’s modular design offers scalability for new retail locations.
A flexible customer journey accommodates online and in-store orders, sit-down and take-away customers, with a retail layout that enables intuitive ordering in-store via iPad or at the counter.
Reinforcing the circular pattern associated with roasting, the bar lighting dramatizes coffee-making craftsmanship. Elsewhere, warm, ambient lighting coupled with direct spotlight help define customer touchpoints, as well as visually intensify the colors, materials, and finishes that pay homage to the modern minimalistic aesthetic of the Pacific Northwest. The use of wood, leather, steel, and other natural elements throughout communicate quality with a deep connection to craftsmanship—two key pillars of the Storyville brand.
Detail-obsessed, the team expanded Storyville’s retail concept with the design of a full coffee system product line. The collection strengthens the brand’s “ritual” narrative with tangible and sensory indicators of exactness, exceptional fit and finish, and an obvious dedication to designed experiences. Showcasing Storyville’s signature blend, twelve individual products take the art and craft of making that perfect cup from start to finish, merging beauty, utility, and ritual.
RESULT
A growing retail brand.
Storyville’s brand continues to expand across the Seattle landscape, with two additional locations since the successful launch of its flagship store. With a retail design language both unique and compelling to the tough local market, the company has established itself as a well-recognized player in the coffee business. Storyville was cited by USA Today as one of the “10 Best” coffee shops in the U.S. in 2019, as well as one of the three most popular places in Pike Place Market by Hoodline.com in March 2020.
