FIELD NOTES / STUDIO PERSPECTIVE
Café design process: from concept to opening day
19 October 2026
KPHD
What does the café design process involve?
For KPHD, café design begins with the business and the guest, then moves through concept, layout, detailed design and the work of carrying those decisions into the built room. Each stage needs a clear question, an accountable decision and a record of what was agreed. Bring the actual site conditions and operating needs into that sequence; build the schedule around the project you have.
Equator Coffees, Culver City. Photograph by Antonio Diaz, 2024.
What needs to be clear before the first plan?
Start with the person arriving at the door. Who are they, what have they come for, and what should this café offer them? Put that beside the operator’s account of the day: ordering, making, handing over, clearing and starting again.
Bring what you know about the site and mark what still needs investigation. A photograph, a measured condition and an assumption are different kinds of information. Keep the differences visible.
How does the idea become a room?
Give the concept something to do. If the café is meant to invite a pause, ask where that pause can happen. If the counter is the center of the experience, test what a guest sees and how the team works around it.
For us, a useful concept helps choose between alternatives. It needs to survive a conversation about the plan, the light, the materials and the service.
What should the layout resolve?
Walk the room from both sides of the counter. Trace arrival, ordering, waiting, finding a seat and leaving. Then trace the team’s route through preparation, service, storage and cleaning.
Put the equipment and the ordinary working objects into the discussion. Name the decisions that are settled and the ones that remain open. Before moving into finer detail, agree on the layout you are developing and who can approve a change.
What happens in detailed design?
This is where the idea has to hold together at close range: the meeting of two materials, the position of a light, the reach to a shelf, the edge a hand touches.
Review samples, equipment information, drawings and responsibilities together. Ask what still needs to be coordinated with the wider project team. A selection is ready to move forward when the people delivering it understand what has been chosen and what remains to be resolved.
How does the design carry through to opening?
Keep the reasons for the decisions available during pricing, fabrication and installation. When a substitution or site condition changes the question, return to the purpose of the choice before accepting the replacement.
Walk the installed room with the people who will operate it. Test the handoff at the counter, the place for the everyday supplies and the route through a busy moment. Record the adjustments and their owners.
The first cup belongs at the end of many connected decisions. Our interest is in keeping their thread intact, from the first conversation to the room people enter.
Sources & editorial note
This article presents KPHD’s design approach. It describes questions and decisions to work through with the project team; it is not a standard duration estimate or a promise of a particular outcome.
The ideas are mine — lived, read, and noticed first. AI writing assistance helps me get them onto the page. — Kellie Patry