Old Chang Kee
Modernising Singapore’s oldest street food brand in the bustling Covent Garden streets.
The Singaporean family-run operator commissioned Phoenix Wharf to redesign the Covent Garden site to improve spatial issues and make the store more modern and memorable. The fast-turnaround project saw most of the new interior and furniture pre-assembled off-site to minimise store closure times and to allow the venue both to close and re-open over the course of a few weeks, with minimal final refinements.
The Old Chang Kee food offer has been incredibly well-reviewed since the brand opened in the UK. The logistics of the existing Covent Garden site, however, offered definite room for improvement and the interior colours were rather muted and the menus were not clearly visible until you were inside, making the offer challenging for anyone previously unfamiliar with it. A clear balance needed to be struck between retaining Old Chang Kee’s brand essence and heritage and creating the desired more modern look and feel.
Although the offer is mostly takeaway, there was also some demand for eating in, so the new layout needed to incorporate seating to meet that mission, whilst not encouraging too much dwell time, as the offer is predominantly grab-and-go there was no possibility of expansion of the very small space overall, which measures just 21.3 sqm in total.
Phoenix Wharf also had a graphic remit, redesigning the menu and creating posters to accompany the newly re-commissioned brand photography - featuring the new melamine serving bowls and plates.
London, UK
Restaurant
Interior Design, Graphic Design
Gary Britton
Location
Category
Services
Photography
“After five years of successful trading, our Covent Garden location was in need of a redesign – both to make our grab-and-go offer more appealing, as well as to make operations a little slicker. Phoenix Wharf were able to take a difficult brief and run with it. The new layout and design certainly have more stopping power than before and our team appreciates a better laid-out store that is operationally easier to maintain. Singaporean food and its accompanying aesthetic is also not well understood in the UK, but Phoenix Wharf put in the effort to research and understand this. I’m excited to use our new-look store as a blueprint for future locations.”
