Brand studio — kitchens, cafés, market halls, small hotels
Thyme Roam is a four-person studio. We take a room, a cook and a half-written menu, then give them a name, a typeface, a colour and every piece of printed matter that carries it — from the door glass to the last page of the wine list. One build at a time, drawn in the room rather than in a deck.
Disciplines
Most places arrive with a lease, a rough menu and a name they are not sure about. These are the five lanes we work in, in the order they usually happen.
01
Shortlists built from the kitchen, the building and the region — then checked for trading conflicts, domain availability and how it sounds shouted across a pass.
02
A wordmark drawn rather than set, a licensed typeface pairing that survives both a chalk wall and a printed insert, and a palette tested under the actual bulbs in the room.
03
The working documents: food and drink menus in an editable layout your team can change weekly, plus cards, bill folders, stamps and the small paper that guests actually hold.
04
Fascia and window drawings ready for the signwriter, interior lettering, table numbering and the awkward bits — service doors, toilets, deliveries — resolved before the fitters arrive.
05
A one-page site with the hours, menu and booking link, image direction for the first shoot, and a set of announcement layouts your team can reuse without opening design software.
Selected work
Different rooms, the same method: sit in the space, read the menu, then draw.
A forty-cover dining room in a converted grain store. We kept the building's own lettering as a starting point, drew a narrow wordmark to sit inside the original stone lintel, and built a menu system the kitchen rewrites every Tuesday around whatever the growers send.
A café that trades hardest before ten. Two palettes — one for daylight, one for the evening wine hours — and a cup, card and bag system the two sites share without either looking like a franchise.
A provisions shop and weekend kitchen. Shelf-edge labelling came first, because it had to be handwritten by staff at speed — the rest of the identity was drawn to match that handwriting rather than fight it.
How a build runs
A full brand build runs across four phases. Each one ends with a working session in your room, not a file sent at midnight.
Weeks 1–2 · Reading the room
We spend two half-days in the space, cook or taste through the draft menu with you, and walk the surrounding streets. You get a short written read of what the place already is before anything is designed.
Weeks 3–5 · Name and mark
Naming shortlist with availability checks, then two identity directions shown in place — on the fascia, on a menu, on a cup. We develop the one you choose; we do not ask you to pick from nine.
Weeks 6–9 · Applied system
The system gets built out and stress-tested against real content: a long tasting menu, a one-page lunch, a wine list that grows. Signwriter and printer artwork is prepared and quoted in parallel.
Weeks 10–12 · Handover
We attend the first print run and the sign install, then sit with your team for a half-day so the people writing next week's menu can do it themselves without breaking the layout.
Week one: the room before anything is named, when most of the answers are already in it.
Engagements
If you are unsure which one fits, describe the room in the enquiry and we will say which we would recommend — including when the answer is none of them yet.
The full opening: name, mark, type, palette, menus, signage and launch kit.
For places with an identity they like and printed matter that keeps letting them down.
A standing half-day each fortnight for groups that keep opening and changing things.
Before you enquire
Print-ready artwork for every applied piece, editable menu templates in a format your team already has, logo files in vector and web formats, a short usage sheet covering sizes and clear space, and the signwriter and printer specifications we prepared. Everything arrives in one folder structure with a plain-language index.
Most of our builds are pre-opening. The useful moment to start is once you have the lease and a rough menu direction, and roughly eight weeks before you need signage on the building. Earlier than that and the menu usually changes enough to redo work; later and the sign install becomes the thing setting your timeline.
You write the dishes; we edit for rhythm, length and consistency, and we set the rules for how things are named so the menu stays coherent when you change it without us. If you want dish descriptions written from scratch we can do that, but it is quoted separately because it needs kitchen time.
Yes — that is the menu and print system engagement. It works well when your mark and type are already settled. If the identity itself is the problem, doing menus first tends to cost more overall, and we will say so rather than take the smaller piece of work.
We specify stock, finish and sizes, brief the suppliers and check the proofs, then attend the first print run and the sign install. You contract and pay the printer and signwriter directly, so you keep the relationship and the invoices after we step back.
You own the wordmark, the layouts and all artwork we produce for you, outright. Typefaces are different: we license them in your name so the licence sits with your business rather than with us, and you are told the cost before anything is drawn with them.
Floor plans if they exist, the draft menu in any form, photographs of the room as it stands, and one person who can make decisions. That last one matters most — builds slow down when approvals have to travel through a committee between phases.
Enquiry
A few lines about the room and the menu is plenty. We read every enquiry ourselves and reply within two working days, including when we are not the right studio for it.