The Galley coffee shop - a re-brand, re-design and refurbishment of the ‘Galley café’ in the Titanic building Belfast.

In collaboration with Treehouse Design Communications Belfast.

The design challenge was to update the current café, creating a space reminiscent of a late 19th/early 20th century ships galley. The design had to fit within the theme of the Titanic, yet not be a ‘theme bar’.
The idea behind our design was to create a functioning modern café that subtly invokes themes of Victorian/Edwardian Belfast and the Titanic with the use of materials, finishes, branding and furniture design.

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The site is located at the main entrance of the Titanic building on the ground floor of the main atrium.
The design of the previous café had become dated and the customer flow did not function well at times of extremely high tourist numbers.
The queuing system had to be able to cope with very large numbers of customers at peak times,
But also have the option to scale back at less busy times of the year.
We resolved the previous poor customer flow by introducing a queuing system which was capable of upsizing from one till/one queue to three tills/three queues depending on the time of year. We incorporated a path of Victorian mosaic floor tiles contrasting against a polished concrete floor to subtly direct the customer traffic in the desired flow direction, while clearly differentiating the browsing/queuing area from the main seating area.
Key design features include the use of handmade, curved cornered wall tiles – evoking the look of Titanic era Belfast. Victorian era mosaic floor tiling. A custom feature ‘slatted bench seat’ inspired by the seating on the HMS Nomadic. Rustic wooden finishes throughout and mood lighting.
All typographical and brand elements were designed with turn of the century block printing techniques in mind.
We delivered a sketch pack, CAD layout and 3D visualisations, which effectively communicated how the design would look when completed.
Fit-out drawings were then detailed and a project management service implemented, steering the project to delivery with ease.