cafe otis: everything I did for my at-home cafe pop-up (part 1)
the branding, menu design, shopping list, and more
I enjoy breaking up the unmoored days spent confined by grey walls and fluorescent lighting with days like this past Saturday. After a month of preparation, I hosted my third at-home cafe pop-up. The pop-up was themed after my greatest responsibility and muse, my dog Otis. I’m going to share a step-by-step guide on how I created the branding material, how I designed the menu to be experimental yet low-complexity, and where to buy all the materials I purchased for the cafe I hosted for 30 people.
Branding
Step One: Name Your Cafe. Driven by the desire to make illustrations of my dog, I named the pop-up Cafe Otis.
Step Two: Create the Logo. I drew the main logo on Procreate. I wanted the style to be loose and free-handed to give myself room to mess up. I ended up with this illustration of Otis drinking coffee.
Step Three: Create Labels for the Iced Drinks. With the logo designed, I created a label for the iced drink cups in Procreate. I sent off the artwork to a sticker printer and received the 50 physical stickers back within 2 weeks. People loved the look of these cups!
Step Four: Create a Stamp for the Hot Drinks & Pastry Bags. To avoid having to buy more stickers, I carved a rubber block into a stamp. Then, I stamped the 50 hot drink cups and 75 pastry bags.
Step Five: Create a Souvenir Sticker. I had too much fun creating the first sticker so I created another one for fun. I illustrated three distinguished gentlemen personifications of my dog Otis in a cozy, cafe environment. This was a big hit!
Menu
Drinks
To cut down cost and complexity, I knew I wanted to keep the menu simple while still having a couple of fun drinks to experiment with.
My menu broke down into five main sections: Coffee, Matcha, Other, Milk Options, Syrup Options and Add-Ons.
For coffee, I kept it simple to espresso based drinks like espressos and lattes (hot or iced), and made a few off-menu items like cortados and americanas. I added one specialty coffee drink: the earl grey latte.
For matcha, I provided two options: a matcha latte (hot or iced) and one specialty matcha drink: the strawberry matcha (iced only).
I have two friends who don’t drink coffee nor tea, so for them, I created an "Other” section featuring a yuzu refresher and sparkling water.
To enable some customization of the coffee, matcha, and other drinks, I offered two milk options (oat milk and 2% cow milk), three syrups (strawberry, honey, and vanilla), and the option to add on two types of cold-foam (original and strawberry).
This may seem like a lot of menu items, but the complexity was relatively low. A majority of these menu items re-used the same ingredients. For example, I was already going to make strawberry syrup for the strawberry matcha so I offered that as a syrup option for the coffee and cold-foam. I needed sparkling water for the yuzu refresher, so it was easy to also offer sparkling water on its own.
Food
On the day of the pop-up, I woke up at 7 a.m. to pick up pastries and donuts. I spent about $50 on 10 pastries from a local bakery and $18 on 10 donuts from a local donut shop. My friends were super generous and one of them baked about a dozen hojicha cookies and another friend brought about a dozen bagels with cream cheese.
Supplies & Shopping List
Here is a complete list of everything I purchased or pre-owned for the pop-up.
Supplies
Paper Straws from Whole Foods
Napkins from Whole Foods
Honey Citron Tea Jam from my local Korean Mart (note: link is to Amazon but it’s way cheaper at a grocery store)
Pastries from Nick + Sons Bakery
Donuts from Moe’s Doughs
Tools
Electric Froth Maker (I used for cold foam)
Part Two?
Would you like to see a part two on the cost breakdown, number of drinks ordered, and what I would do differently?
Comment Prompt
I would love to hear if you have hosted an at-home cafe before, attended one, or would like to host one in the future. What did you like about it? What did you not like so much? How does the at-home cafe compare to other types of hosting in your opinion (i.e. dinner parties, pre-games, birthday parties, etc.)?
!!!!!!!! I love this! The dedication! The turnout! The commitment to a project!!!! So impressed and inspired.
Were all of the 30 people there at the same time or was it more like a 'real' cafe with coming and going? If so, did you have enough space? Also as you were taking the orders and all did you have actual time with your friends or just grateful to have provided an amazing moment? ps : the stickers are amazing!!