How We're Designing Our Libertyville Cafe
Behind The Scenes
If you haven’t been following along, I’ll give you the one-sentence synopsis: We’re expanding our company with two exciting new cafes, the first of which is opening soon as an extension of our Libertyville HQ & Roastery. If you want the full story, check out our two recent blogs that give a fuller picture of this exciting expansion: We’re Expanding and How Our Expansion Started.
One of the elements that seems to draw the most fascination is that of the design. How did you decide on that design? Is it going to look just like Highwood? In this blog post, I will quell your design curiosity only in part, as I hope the final design be revealed on your first visit.
The twists and turns of this project have significantly impacted the design, so much so that our original plan differs hugely from our final product. As frustrating as limitations can be, I find that sometimes the best creativity comes not from what can be done, but what cannot be. It was precisely the limitations we were met with along the way that brought us to our final design.
The beginning stages of the design process included rough drafts of many viable floor plans, which we weeded through slowly as a team to narrow down to the top contenders.
Where do you begin when designing a new cafe?
In the past six years of operating Tala, there have been many points when, for one reason or another, a space must be re-designed. Whether it’s the storage loft, the offices, or the production area, I generally engage the same process:
Take measurements and sketch out the skeleton of the space.
Take stock of everything that needs to be in the space, giving names to general functions (e.g. roasting, order fulfillment, offices, storage).
Make a list of must-haves and nice-to-haves for the space.
Determine the best flow of action through a space—taking into account how people move and what they do in the space.
Dream up aesthetics that support the functions we need.
That last part is often what people consider the fun part, but it can’t really come without the grunt work of the rest of it. Frankly, I like the middle three points the best, as they suit my problem-solver mind.
That being said, I began this project the same way I would any other. I listed out all the spaces we’d need across the whole building, taking into account the way a cafe would change our roastery, offices, and storage.
As a team, we talked through some must-haves for this space. One of the most notable non-negotiables we had for this project was a window from the cafe into the roastery. We wanted, similar to a distillery or brewery, for guests to connect to the larger story behind the coffee they are consuming.
We also knew we wanted to make the space flow nicely with our existing space so we could also expand our back-of-house. These two factors narrowed our floor plan options considerably, giving us a reasonable amount of viable options to explore.
Taking all of our must-haves into account, I drafted up several rough sketches of potential layouts for the team to see, and we quickly narrowed in on one floor plan that best addressed all of our priorities.
After defining the layout, we talked about aesthetics. This is when it is fun to really think about what we like and dislike about the space in order to work around the things we want to highlight.
Were there any major design challenges in this cafe?
One of the things we always try to do is maximize seating in a space. This tends to be one of those rules we follow that informs our original design. In keeping suit with this, our original design was such that it was filled with rows of tables to accommodate the maximum allowed. It wasn’t until months into designing that we were informed that our occupancy would be reduced by more than half what we had planned due to the convergence of several codes. This meant removing lots of seats we had planned for, and we were left with what felt like a pretty boring and uninspiring design that seemed empty. We kept moving along with this sub-par design while we were in the weeds of permit approvals and the like until it all came to a head when we realized we just weren’t really excited about the space.
In a singular moment, the realization occurred to me that all of the many revisions just kept detracting and detracting, and it became obvious that if we were going to be happy with this design we would need to add something. I took my sketchpad home that night and spent the entire next day consumed in a full re-design, putting everything back on the table. Of course, many things fell right where they did before: the window into the roastery, the location of the kitchen, etc. but the exercise gave me the much-needed freedom to imagine the space afresh and gain new inspiration.
The re-design was so different and frankly rather ambitious, that I wasn’t sure if everyone would be sold on it, but Stefan, Ryan, and Keith were all equally excited about the new direction as I was. Very few things have so dramatically altered our energy and excitement as a team as when we finally bit down on a design we loved that worked with the space and confines we had.
What is this cafe going to be like?
We knew that there was no getting around the oddity of being tucked away in an obscure part of Libertyville and entering a building that was quite clearly not made for the purpose of retail. We feel like our final design accommodates these strange aspects while ultimately giving the feeling of having been transported out of a warehouse and into an entirely unseen and unique cafe experience. In terms of aesthetics, we will keep it brief so as not to ruin any surprise for those eagerly awaiting the final experience. Suffice it to say that we are contrasting the light, airy industrial feel of our roastery with sleek dark walnut and cozy seating.
Joanna Tong
Joanna is one of the owners here at Tala, heading up Operations and Strategy. Born and raised in Minnesota, she moved to Illinois in 2014 with no intention of staying long-term until the idea of Tala came to light. When not in the office or the cafe, you can find her in a forest preserve enjoying the outdoors or at home hanging out with her cat.