The End of an Era…

Way back when Timmy and I started dating, about three months into our relationship, he opened a café at Harbor Athletic Club. It was originally named “EN Organic Smoothie Bar” and it was Tim’s very first business venture. He was so proud, and I was so proud of him. The café was a success from the start, and six months after first opening, Tim quit his full time job to work at the cafe full time. He worked many 60-70 hour weeks, and I spent many hours perched on a stool at the café, keeping him company and eating lots of smoothies. Our dating relationship progressed with EN Organic Smoothie Bar as the backdrop of our romance. Tim even created and named a smoothie after me – “Bea Berry” – because I ate so many of them.

After we got married, I used my graphic design skills to give the café a much-needed facelift, and we renamed it Apple Café in anticipation of our opening Apple Wellness. You can see my documentation of the process here.

  When we began to work toward opening Apple Wellness, Tim cut back his hours at the café, hiring a manger to replace him. When Apple Wellness opened in June 2010, Tim stepped away from the café completely and ran Apple Wellness full time. 

Of course there were still things for him to do with the café, payroll, grocery runs, and accounting, and I still created sale flyers and different design pieces, but our focus had shifted to something new.
Then in December, we got pregnant and our lives began to seem a little too complicated. We debated trying to sell the café, but I think both of us were too emotionally attached to really consider it as an option. Eventually, after months of pondering and praying, we felt it was best to sell the café and simplify our lives. We sold the café in May, and Apple Café’s last day was today, June 16^th.
It was bittersweet to clear out the space and make room for a new owner with a new name. I found myself tearing up as I realized I would never again perch on the stool at Apple Café and watch Timmy make smoothies. 

Apple Café was our first business and, thanks to God, it was a success. We were blessed to begin it, blessed to run it, and blessed to sell it. I can’t say I’ll miss late night shopping trips to Sam’s Club, but I will miss something I can’t quite put my finger on. Perhaps it’s the past and the realization that our dating years are getting further away and Apple Café was a small remaining tie to the days when I was Becki Davison and I would pop over to the café after work to visit my boyfriend and get a free smoothie… 

This is an Apple Nutrition Shelf Talker.

(designed by me)

Shelf Talkers sit on shelves and "talk" to customers. Customers like me, who have no idea what in the world Glucosamine is or why I should be taking it.

Well, that used to be me.

Until I got saddled with the job of writing 50 shelf talkers on vitamins and supplements I knew absolutely nothing about. Now? Well, I can rattle off the benefits of Coenzyme Q10 with the best of them. Be careful mentioning any aches, pains, or health discomforts around me. I've been excitedly waiting for opportunities to share my newfound knowledge, and I am ready to pounce. You'll walk away with an armful of vitamins before you know what hit you. (And be the better for it, seriously.)

Come to think of it, I'm the better for it. I feel like I've finally befriended the little pile of pills Timmy gives me every morning. "Hello there, Vitamin B, thank you for making my bones strong and healthy..."

Apple Cafe - Part Five

We are done.

Saturday, October 10th had been marked for months on our calendar with a huge "REVAMP DAY" across the date. And all of our work and efforts took shape and became something real:

 

 

 

As we stood, looking at our creation, Timmy turned to me and said, "Is it everything you hoped it would be?" And, even though my eyes had already picked up on several things that needed tweaking, I smiled back into his sparkling blue eyes and concluded, "Yes, it really, truly is."

I regularly design logos, greeting cards, wedding invitations, and brochures. Individual pieces of something bigger - it is easy to design a postcard that does not necessarily need to blend into a cohesive theme. But, to design an entire identity. To create a whole marketing campaign. To start from absolutely nothing.

I did it. And now I know I can do anything.

To view all of the revamp photos, go to: picasaweb.google.com/rb.obrien7/AppleCafe#

Apple Cafe - Part Four

Marketing
When developing a marketing campaign, we determined our different types of customers, and what message would be most applicable to their lives.

Our goal for the first month after the switch was to create awareness of our "new things". In addition to a new look and a new name, we spent hours creating new smoothies, a new line of iced coffee drinks, new advertising, and new promotions.

New Smoothies
Because the original EN smoothie names had been borrowed from a friend, we had to rename all of the Apple Cafe smoothies. I love naming things, and definitely enjoyed some of the name switches. Now, doesn't Raspberry Radiance sound so much tastier than Raspberry Rave?

Additionally, we created three new smoothie recipes. This is not quite as easy as it sounds. Tim is amazing, and spent hours researching popular smoothie flavors, calculating the perfect blend of ingredients. And the result was well worth the effort:

New Iced Coffee
We expanded our coffee line and introduced three tasty new iced coffee drinks:

New Supplements:
Supplement sales account for a huge margin of our profit. Tim researched and found several exciting new supplements to bring in to Apple Cafe.

In addition to bringing in new supplements offerings, we also reorganized the existing supplements, making room for our "shelf talkers". These small signs sit next to the supplements, catching the customers' eyes, and explaining why this particular vitamin or supplement is beneficial. They are meant to entice and create interest. We kept the design simple and clean, with a larger "headline" proclaiming an eye-catching statement.

New Promotions
We spent hours of time and research, coming up with fresh new promotions for Apple Cafe. Our goal was to generate excitement and create interaction with our customers.

New Kids' Menu
Kids love things that are "just for them." EN Organic Smoothie Bar was not at all kid-friendly. No photos, no bright colors. We realized this was a huge market we had not even begun to tap into. So we created a Kid's Menu and Kid's Pick marketing campaign.

EN did offer Kiddie size smoothies, but the kid creativity ended there. So we created an entire Kid's Menu, full of healthy snacks that parents could confidently let kids choose from. For the Kid's marketing, I put a new twist on our apple logo, placing it upside down and sideways on the page. This adds a spark of playfulness and silliness, an element that appeals to children. Bright colors and crisp photography show off our Kid's Menu offerings.

Additionally, we started a new Kid's Pick program. Kid's absolutely love to choose things for themselves. Even if they only have two options. We created options, included a fun toy, and placed it all at kid's eye level.

And every other Tuesday is Kid's Day.

Apple Cafe - Part Three

Photography
Whoever said a picture is worth a thousand words was very, very right. Photographs catch eyes as people hurry by, stirring the appetite and creating a want. Our entire goal is to create that want, that desire for that customer to purchase what we're selling. People may miss words, but they never miss a picture.

And children, well they may not be able to read, but they notice everything. Nothing sells more than children pleading for a treat. But how can they ask for a smoothie, when, to their eyes, those smoothies don't even exist?

We made those smoothies come alive in a grueling 8 hour photo shoot.

When designing the smoothie photography shots, I determined that, to keep a cohesive, modern look, we would shoot the smoothies on a blank white background, with a straight on perspective. Each smoothie was carefully groomed and surrounded by its respective ingredients; strawberries, blueberries, chocolate, etc.

For the rest of the photography, I followed a similar shooting style. Although I did mix up the perspective on some shots, my photography retains the same simplicity throughout.

Sidenote: The best part about food photography? Getting to eat the props. Sometimes I like to pretend that the strawberries and blueberries auditioned for a "fruit modeling" job in my pictures. We picked the very prettiest fruits, shining them up and placing them just so. And sometimes I like to think that these pretty fruit models were just so delighted to live forever in my photographs. Sometimes I think they probably dreamed about this moment their whole fruity lives.

And that is what I thought about as I ate my fruit models.

Apple Cafe - Part Two

Logo
When creating our Apple Cafe logo, my biggest obstacle was to find a way to create a new, fresh logo using an often over-used object: the much loved apple.

I solved this problem by forgoing the typical red, and going with a bright yellow-green shade instead. Also, by halving the apple and exposing a scattering of seeds, I found a way to show off the apple in a new, unusual form. When drawing the apple shape, I drew clean, curved lines, skipping outlines and creating deliberately simple shapes. i wanted the apple in our logo to be able to stand alone, without the need for words.

When adding words to my design, my goal was to maintain the simplicity of the logo. I chose a simple sans-serif typeface. Because this will also be the logo of our Apple Nutrition store, I created a logo that will be easily interchangeable between the two businesses. I placed the word "cafe" in small caps, a contrast from the lowercase letters of "apple". I did this deliberately to create a visual separation of the two words. The Apple Nutrition logo will be exactly the same, only with the word "nutrition" replacing "cafe".

And so, after much research, many sketches and thumbnails, the Apple Cafe logo was finally born:

Design
After creating our logo, everything else began to fall into place. We had a definite color palette, a logo, a sans-serif and script typeface, and had established several repeating design elements:

Menu Board
The visual center of Apple Cafe is the menu board, and everything pretty much revolves around that, as the most prominent design piece.

The biggest, most obvious problems with our current menu board was that there are no pictures, and it is very hard to read. Nothing about it says "smoothies", and it is very dark and boring.

My initial plan was to create something similar structurally wise to the existing piece. But, after much thought and research, we decided to head in another direction. And this is what we created:

It was different from anything we'd seen, but very modern and fresh -- a series of wooden hanging frames, painted Apple Cafe colors, and matted with the much loved Arcadia fabric. We wanted to keep the menu boards themselves very simple and easy to read. So, the added fabric would give the entire piece a bit of pattern, texture, and added visual interest. Also, dividing the sections into different frames gives us the ability to switch out new pictures easily as promotions change.

Now it was just a matter of taking all our ideas and inspiration and making it a reality…

Apple Cafe - Part One

New Look
EN Organic Smoothie Bar is getting a new name and a new look: Apple Cafe. Compliments of yours truly.

EN Organic Smoothie Bar is a smoothie bar/cafe, located in Harbor Athletic Club. It's menu boasts over 20 different smoothie flavors, all divided into handy categories like 'fat burner' or 'protein' or 'just fruit'. Best. Smoothies. EVER.

It also offers delicious coffees, hot chocolate, and teas. Additionally, there are rows of shelves full of the very best nutritional supplements, vitamins, whey protein, etc. And the customer service is amazing.

Have I mentioned that the owner/manager of Apple Cafe is my husband? And I am oh, so proud of him. Yes, he is a 24 year old entrepreneur extraordinaire.

The original design work for the smoothie bar was created before I came along, and there really wasn't any sort of consistent theme, just a bunch of mismatched signage -- and lots of red and black. So, the first step was to determine a cohesive theme for Apple Cafe.

We analyzed our customers and age demographics and determined that we wanted Apple Cafe to emanate a trendy, modern feeling, while still being warm and family oriented. This was especially important, as we realized that our audience ranged from toddler to senior citizen. Harbor Athletic Club is a very family oriented gym, and not overly frequented by hard core muscle builders or professional weight lifters. Our look needed to appeal to men, women, and children. Our goal was to find a way to mesh natural and modern; classy enough to appeal to Middleton adults, but bright and colorful enough to catch the eyes of kids walking by. Our business is located in a gym, so we already have an advantage. Our problem is not how to get the customers IN, but how to catch their attention as they hurry in and out.

New Name
Wait a second... you're probably wondering, why Apple Cafe? Well, we chose the name Apple Cafe for several reasons:
1) Apples have a very healthy reputation, and we want everyone to know that Apple Cafe is healthy, too!
2) Apple Cafe indicates that there is more to our business than just smoothies, with the name pointing to the other items on our cafe menu.
3) We are planning to open a nutrition store named Apple Nutrition in 2010. We want Apple Nutrition and Apple Cafe to be a unified chain, sharing the same name and look.

Inspiration
Sometimes all it takes is one glimpse of an object, brimming with inspiration, and you know, just know that you've finally got it. And by "it" I mean, the completion of all the mismatched design thoughts whirling around your mind.

I found the perfect fabric.

This perfect fabric line is named Arcadia, designed by Moda fabrics. It is deliciously unique and modern. The colors are perfect. And, in an instant, I had the entire Apple Cafe look planned out in my mind.

When I came home, clutching several yards of Arcadia fabric, I proudly showed it to Timmy with a huge smile, full of ideas. He stared at it for a while, but didn't really understand how a pile of fabric could become anything very wonderful. I guess it is something only a designer can understand, although I will try to explain it the way I explained it to Tim.

Every design starts with an idea, and every idea starts with something to inspire it. From that first spark comes a series of sparks and thoughts, but all you need is that first spark to get the chain reaction going. So, when I look at this fabric, I see more than just a bunch of material. I see clean lines and geometric shapes, mixed in with natural silhouettes. I see a beautifully harmonized color palette that perfectly shouts "nature! apples! modern!" I see simple color and shapes, curved lines and repeating patterns. And this is all a starting point, leading to where my designs will eventually end up. I may not even USE the fabric for anything other than inspiration.

But it is a good starting point.

To be continued...