Café Africa is a high street coffee shop designed for a privately owned company. The brief was to create a social space aimed at bringing the community together in a fun but relaxing environment whilst promoting awareness of fair trade, ethical values and community spirit.

The café and concept was designed by Ferro Design Ltd. The shop unit was originally an old run down kitchen and bathroom showroom. Change of use had already been obtained by the client however planning and building control approval had to be sought as part of the project process. We also went through the complicated procedure with EON of installing a new mains electrical supply in order to increase the electrical capacity to suit the new use. This also entailed splitting and redistributing the metered supply with the residential premises above.

The scope of works involved the complete strip out of the shop to take it back to the shell. The shop was completely rewired with new air handling systems, flooring, ceiling and lighting. The garage to the rear of the property was converted to create a hygienic storage area and the shopfront was completely renewed. Internally we installed a new disabled toilet, refurbished the catering staff toilet and installed a brand new kitchen from what was the old office space.

New disabled compliant counters and furniture were added to create this unique environment with a feature coffee bean bulkhead and coffee bean designs cut on in to the new rubber floor.

The client and designer were very keen to use recyclable materials to reinforce the ethical message and therefore we worked with Ferro Design to source materials with eco friendly credentials. Some of the materials we worked with, namely Kieri board, which is derived from reclaimed sorghum straw and Ormano Palm Wood which is entirely biodegradable and from a renewable source allowed us to use our specialist joinery skills and experience to work with these new products to ensure that they were suitable for the application.

The entire fit-out once on site took a total of five weeks and worked within a budget of £189K.