1,500 seat eatery.

Around the world, organizations are starting to take a hard look at the environments in which their employees work. Telecom giant, Rogers is has been leading the pack. At the heart of their 1 million sq/ft campus sits a 1,500 seat, modern urban eatery. Home to 6 restaurants, a bookable presentation room, and countless places to have an impromptu chat. Our team was engaged from at the earliest stages of the project to theme and define all brand elements within the space. Strategy, naming, creative direction, and application for custom restaurant branding, environmental graphics, digital signage, cashless pay systems and marquee signage.

scope: 
Art Direction, Brand Identity, Copywriting, Digital/Print Collateral, Environmental Graphics, Event Branding, Interior Design, Naming
role: 
Creative Director

As technology and the changing dynamics of the employee-employer experience amplifies, forward-thinking organizations are challenged to create environments that not only function but inspire employees. Corporations like Rogers are at the forefront of this thinking and are heavily investing in the choice and flexibility of tomorrow’s working culture.

The Ted name and the overarching theme is an homage to the legacy of the organization’s founder, the late Ted Rogers — a reminder to employees new and old of the family and the talented thinker that started it all.

Eatery
Consulting with the Rogers historian, we developed the retro-themed environment utilizing a mixture of archival ads, product images, and news articles. Two story high branded walls, skinned with a mosaic treatment of nostalgic imagery, highlight the primary entrances. Branded uniforms, POP collateral, and digital and spatial signage weave the primary Ted identity throughout.

Mixed within the space are several unique feature walls. A montage of quotes, tone on tone retro icons, and a large white-wash, painted to look it had been there for a century, all reinforce the reclaimed urban feel. The custom treated panels serve several purposes: adding visual interest by breaking up the large scale of the space, serving as orientation or meeting points, and supporting the individual restaurants they sit next to.

Restaurants
Within the space are six individual restaurants, all unified through a connected system of names and visual identities. Collaborating with our architect partners HOS Steelcase / HOK, and the food services group, we developed the strategy, menu language, structural signage, and substrate applications for each food service. Logos for each restaurant were dimensionally built out, vinyl applied, or custom fabricated via a marquee sign.

The Work
Our team then built out the system of digital menus and POP display collateral that supports each restaurant. Custom branded self-ordering kiosks and pre-ordered pickup queues sit next to the cashless tills. We then set the food services group up with a simple digital menu framework from which to alternate content daily, a custom shot library of food photography, and a system of iconography to promote individual dishes as well as themed promotions all wrapped up in a style guide.

Points of entry, marquee signage and environment branding.

We developed the naming and identity system for the 6 in-house restaurants.

Digital menus, self checkout screens, window displays – we carefully dished up every last detail of brand communication within the eatery.