Designing a new way to order

Grillshack is a restaurant based in Soho, London, offering quality fast food in a utilitarian environment, with a number of interesting ordering methods.

Back in 2012, we were approached to create the brand, menu design and ordering instructions, with a heavy focus on customer experience through a unique environment and intuitive design. Once you’ve looked at our work, we’d recommend popping down to Beak Street and trying one of their amazing burgers!

This was the first large project that we completed in our Richmond office. We kicked off with a team ideas session in our meeting room. Understanding exactly what Grillshack wanted to portray was key in developing our design proposals.

Grillshack is simple and honest, with a hand-made feel to its identity. Clever use of type played a big part in the designs from the bespoke text on sauce labels, to the rough and ready stencil used in the Grillshack name.

Kim (from Boki Coffee) worked his magic on a Grillshack motif that has been used throughout the restaurant, from window stickers to coin tokens. It looks great at any size, printed or digital.

Most of our time on the project was spent refining the menu design and layout. Grillshack didn’t want something that looked too ‘designed’ so we needed to keep it looking rough and bespoke; printing on a canvas material adds to the rustic aesthetic.

Introducing the customers to new methods of ordering allowed us to put our information design hat back on to create an engaging step-by-step instruction manual on the reverse of the table menus. This was used on the website too.

This design was the pioneering start to the Grillshack menu. The design has now developed and evolved from our original work.