Street Food Market Café design & build

Services: Design / Build / Interior design / Project Management / Shopfitting

Client: Leicester Students’ Union

Industry: Education / University / Catering / Retail / Café | Location: Leicester

The Leicester student union shop was underperforming. It had evolved from the need to sell a note book, perhaps a few toiletries, a packaged sandwich and drink offer with a few Union branded goods thrown in. The offer was confused. A lack of choice and experience made this the last place to be seen and hence they were losing money and very rapidly.

Our brief was to explore a better use of the space, a space that would turn its investment over quicker and continually evolve to meet the needs of todays savvy student.

After a design led market research piece we concluded the design style should follow that of a street food, in-door market approach – It should be vibrant and engaging, a social place to meet and spend time that’s on trend with an abundance of choice. Union street food market was born.

We provided the concept design visualisation process and the complete project management services in role as main contractor to realise the new design at Leicester Students Union.

The design and build challenge was to retain as much of the current building infrastructure already within the store – the vintage parquet flooring and wall panelling and envelope them seamlessly within the design and build intent. A six week programme commenced with the strip out of the current shop, a complete and new plumbing and electrical system for the new catering appliances to run the food stalls as well as extract and air con to manage through the fabric of the old walls. The new serving counters, all stainless steel catering grade were clad in a mixture of metro tiling and distressed timbers with feature lighting slung from each frame to give the effect of a market stall trader. We added a buskers with a tall wall of speaker fronts complete with a ticker tape advertising board to announce the next act on!

The space now had a clear identity, was welcoming and provided a choice of food styles for all – as well as a good grab and go offer with a few essentials packed in. The takings through the till echoed the success of the project, with the project paying back in less than 8 months.  

Keywords: Design / Build / Interior design / Project Management / Café / Food to go / Student Union / Shopfitting / Education / University / Catering / Retail / Café