Leading organic dairy brand Yeo Valley has teamed up with Bristol-based creative agency Phoenix Wharf to open its first outlet in London.
The two-storey café, shop and workspace on Queensway – between Hyde Park and Notting Hill – acts as a showcase for Blagdon-based Yeo Valley in the capital a dine-in café, grab’n’go produce and a mini retail store, as well as a work and meeting space on the site’s upper storey. 
As the site is directly opposite Queensway tube station, it is a prime location for commuters looking for a healthy eat-in or takeaway.
Family-owned Yeo Valley, best known for its range of organic yogurts, called on Phoenix Wharf, which specialises in branding and interiors concepts for hospitality and retail brands, to help with the project after the agency explored the feasibility of using part of its Blagdon headquarters as a brand experiential space for group clients, conferences and events.
Phoenix Wharf associate director Emma Gullick said: “The creative process and ideas that came out of the project created some bigger questions on how to showcase what Yeo Valley is all about and a relationship was created between the two parties, which led to Phoenix Wharf being invited to win a three-way pitch for the design of the London outlet.
Phoenix Wharf’s designers were asked to maintain and express the brand’s nature-inspired ethos and friendly, fun and unpretentious feel, while also creating links to the existing HQ.
This included integrating the work of artist-illustrator Natasha Clutterbuck, who has a long association with the brand and whose murals are part of the Blagdon canteen, as well as creating artwork for special editions of the product range.
The café-store has two street-facing, retail-style, full-height boutique windows to either side of a main double-door entrance, with backlit storefront branding above for the Yeo Valley Café, using the brand’s existing heart-shaped identity.
The interior features a dual ‘warm and cool’ concept, with a white and bright ‘cool’ area for grab’n’go produce and mini retail area, underlining the freshness of the dairy produce range, and a warmer ‘natural’ sit-down area, reflecting the brand’s countryside origins and authenticity.
The outlet also has an eye-catching, huge-scale ceiling feature down its centre taking the form of a stained-glass style light-box installation showing an abstracted map of Yeo Valley’s farm telling the business’s story while adding a “bit of extra theatre to the space,” according the Emma.
A rear wall features a large-, retro-style TV against exposed brickwork which also tells the ‘Yeo TV’ brand story visually (without sound) and offering a distraction for anyone queueing at the counter. 
Yeo Valley Properties managing director Adrian Fenton said: “The experience of working with Phoenix Wharf was very uplifting. They really helped bring our ideas to life and their visual concepts transferred almost exactly to the finished space, which we’re very happy with.”
Yeo Valley, which is now owned and managed by the second generation of the founding Mead family, is Britain’s leading organic dairy brand, as well as a thriving centre of food and farming activity.
Founded in Bristol in 2015, Phoenix Wharf has worked with a wide range of clients from start-ups to established heritage brands such as Space NK, The National Trust, Ensemble, Craghoppers, The Gro Company and The Richmond Building at Bristol University. Along with sister creative companies Ignition (exhibitions, events and experiences) and Caroline (strategic communications), it is part of the Istoria Group.
