Hospitality

Cafe Sio

Café Sio Culture Café was one of my first design projects at Momentum. Chapter Arts Centre asked us to come up with an interior scheme and furniture specification for their new catering venture which operated from the Craft in the Bay building located at the south end of Lloyd George Avenue. The cafe took its name "sïo" from the Welsh translation for "buzzing like a bee". The project was spearheaded by Chef and Head of Food and Beverages, Laurentiu Florea.

I worked closely with Laurentiu at the conception of the project to help him realise his vision and identify the perfect furniture and lighting for the café. The intention was to replicate Chapter’s hugely successful cafe bar operation at Chapter Canton and create a new income stream that would support their artistic and educational work.

It was received extremely well following it’s launch in June 2017 but unfortunately, just after the cafés first birthday, it sadly announced that it would be closing its doors, siting that despite all efforts by staff and consistently great customer feedback they had not been able to grow the offer as they had hoped due to a particularly challenging business climate for the food retail sector in Cardiff and across the UK at that time.

Despite the fate of the café, it is still a project that I enjoyed and I was extremely happy with the end result.