Levy Restaurants commissioned SHH interiors and architecture practice to upgrade RFU Twickenham Stadium bar development’s extensive hospitality services in order to be a truly world-class offer in time for the 2015 Rugby World Cup. At the same time, the RFU had changed a number of its core DNA brand elements and these needed to be incorporated into any new designs.
40 bar and food units: flow and sales increase
SHH worked as the design partner for operator Levy Restaurants UK (the sports and leisure division of Compass UK & Ireland) on the project, tasked with creating new designs for 40 bar and food units. The designs were tested earlier this year to ensure they were ready for the large number of visitors during the Rugby World Cup, and showed significant success in the new processes.
Roy Westwood, creative director, Levy Restaurants UK explains:
“The kiosk offer is constantly changing. The current hole in the wall model is uncomfortable, restrictive and places practicality above the guest experience. The new layered approach we designed and tested with SHH has already increased the flow and sales substantially at Twickenham Stadium and we are confident will be successful under peak pressure during the World Cup.”
Design criteria
The criteria for the new designs were threefold: speed of service, ease of processing orders, and easy to recognise signage. The idea was to reflect a more relaxed style of service found in the high street or pub rather than the typical stadium mind-set with long queues and little choice.
‘The bar and food unit redesign came with a number of challenges ranging from kiosks exposed to the elements and large queues during short intervals,’ commented SHH creative director Neil Hogan. ‘Although the units are located under cover on each level, they are also exposed to the weather because of the open access from the stadium seating areas. They therefore had to be engineered as if they were outdoor bars in order to contend with the cold and the damp. Usage before, after and during matches – especially during intervals – can be incredibly frenetic with huge demand and massive time pressures for serving, so everything also had to function incredibly efficiently.’
Huge red facades
The simple words for the re-designed offers – ‘Hunger’ and ‘Thirst’ – came from the new RFU brand DNA, but SHH chose to use them at super-scale on huge red façades for maximum impact and visibility. As the base units themselves were fairly unforgiving – cold, hard and made of concrete – the strong use of colour, graphics and lighting was important to enable them to stand out as much as possible.
Digital screens inform customers
Digital screens in the exterior corridor area with smaller ones behind the counters are used to alert, direct and inform customers, as well as to support RFU Twickenham’s brand values. The graphic language for the screens was created by SHH and offers the Levy Restaurants UK and the RFU flexibility to change branding according to games and individual sponsorship deals.
The 10 minute interval is incredibly busy, with the bars expected to serve huge numbers of fans, so SHH and Levy developed a queuing system and pre-pour bar service to not only have the beer ready but to keep it chilled so waiting times are reduced.
‘As a subtle reflection of the location, we photographed the famous wall of bronze statues showcasing legendary former players at Twickenham.’ explained Neil Hogan, ‘We then used elements of those images in shadow form on some of the more generic digital images to add a sense of place.’ The design of each bar is layered with industrial pendant lights at the front for the ‘Hunger’ counters and a material palette that includes chunky mesh, black steel fronts, stainless steel counters and red waterproof laminate.
Photography by Gareth Gardner
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