Mister Cheeks
All Day Eats
Mister Cheeks is a neighborhood café and market on Court Street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, named for the couple's son. The concept spans coffee and pastries in the morning, rotisserie chicken and prepared foods through the day, soft serve from a walk-up window, and a small market of packaged provisions.
We built the brand identity, packaging, menus, signage, and merchandise system that holds the full concept together, with hand-drawn illustration and expressive typography carrying a tone that reads as familiar rather than nostalgic.
What we did
- Brand Strategy & Positioning
- Brand Identity
- Verbal Identity & Voice
- Packaging & Merchandise Design
- Print & Collateral Design
- Environmental & Signage Design
- Digital & Web Experience
- Marketing & Campaigns
- Art Direction, Photography & Video
The Challenge
A concept built to do this much at once — coffee counter, rotisserie kitchen, ice cream window, market shelf — risked reading as several businesses sharing an address rather than one neighborhood fixture. The identity needed to hold coffee, chicken, and soft serve together without flattening any of them into sameness, and to carry the personal weight of a name chosen for a child without feeling precious.
Our Work
We positioned Mister Cheeks against Court Street’s dense field of cafés and bakeries, grounding the identity in the owners own story rather than a generic neighborhood-café look. We gave the concept a distinct verbal identity that carries personality without slipping into cute, and built the illustration system to flex — a rotisserie box reads differently than a soft serve cup, but both carry the same hand, so the range of the menu reads as one brand rather than several.
Results
Since opening, Mister Cheeks has become a fixture on Court Street, drawing steady lines at the takeout window and recognition within the design industry, including a being selected as a finalist at the NYCxDESIGN Awards as well as the 22nd annual Hospitality Design Awards.
