Elevating the
Corporate Grind.
See how Sum>One Coffee Roasters has driven significant workplace sales growth by successfully blending café-quality specialty drinks with cost-competitive, purpose-driven sustainability, and scalable design.
Eurest Sum>One
Café Experience
Challenge & Context
Role: Creative Director (Sum>One, Farmer Brothers)
Corporate spaces often struggle to compete with third-space neighborhood coffee shops. When employees want high-quality espresso or a collaborative workspace, they frequently leave the building. The challenge was to design an on-site, turnkey specialty café concept that:
Draws Employees In: Replicates the warm, upscale, sensory experience of a local craft coffee bar.
Addresses Fluctuating Foot Traffic: Optimizes spatial design to prevent morning bottlenecks while transforming seamlessly into a collaborative workspace in the afternoon.
Communicates Purpose: Integrates the story of sustainable agriculture and farmer equity directly into the visual and tactile fabric of the space.
The Artisan Bar & Touchpoints
Instead of standard industrial stainless-steel counters, the concept integrates warm, natural wood tones, dark matte metal framework, and stone countertops. The espresso machines and brewing towers are positioned low to allow face-to-face interaction between baristas and guests, removing physical barriers to foster a neighborhood-café vibe.
Adaptation to Varied Corporate Footprints
For a massive corporate food service provider like Eurest (a division of Compass Group), the scalability of the Sum>One café design was the absolute linchpin of the rollout. Because Eurest operates thousands of corporate marketplaces across vastly different corporate environments, a rigid, "one-size-fits-all" café layout would have failed.
Preserving the "Storytelling"
For Eurest’s corporate clients, coffee bars are heavily relied upon to boost office morale and draw hybrid workers back into the physical office. A scalable model allowed Eurest to pitch a plug-and-play specialty coffee program to clients of any size, offering a customizable "breakaway experience" that could be rapidly deployed to match any company’s specific budget and real estate constraints.
Who is Sum>One Coffee?
Turning a Brand into a “Space”
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Warm timbers, live greenery, stone surfaces.
Strategic Impact:
Lowers cortisol and actively counters workplace burnout.
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Bright task lighting at point-of-sale; warm, dimmable LED tracks in lounge areas.
Strategic Impact:
Transitions the space naturally from an energetic morning rush to an inviting afternoon workshop.
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At its core, Sum>One Coffee Roasters is all about bringing people together.
Strategic Impact:
Creating a deeper since of community drives collaboration, and fosters camaraderie.
The Parts That Made Up The Whole
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Counter Cards
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Merchandisers
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Custom Machine Wraps
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Apparel
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Menu Boards
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Flavor Labels
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Wall Coins
Conclusion & Continued Support
The partnership between Eurest and Farmer Brothers' specialty brand, Sum>One Coffee Roasters, yielded three primary outcomes:
Financial Growth: The upscale café concept has served as an all-day dining hub for corporate offices, directly driving sales and workplace marketplace growth for Eurest.
Cost-Effective Premiumization: It successfully met the rising consumer demand for artisanal, craft-quality coffee (including custom espresso, drip blends, and seasonal items) while keeping costs highly competitive for corporate clients amidst volatile coffee markets.
When the official timeline wrapped, our creative partnership didn’t stop. We extended the brand’s narrative past the launch pad, equipping Eurest with a robust ecosystem of ongoing touchpoints—from immersive training videos and tactile counter cards to high-impact stakeholder presentations.
Farmer Brothers Creative Team:
Creative Director - Brian Donahue
Project Manager - Madeleine de Caires
Senior Graphic Designer - Mark Smith
Graphic Designer - Kate Alcid
Production Artist - Carol-Lynn Russell
Proofreader - David Fussell
Proofreader ESP - JD Glass
Socio-Environmental Impact: By scaling Farmer Brothers' Project DIRECT initiative, a portion of every pound of coffee sold directly funds training, environmental protection, and financial stability for generational farming communities in regions like Colombia, Guatemala, and Ethiopia.
