Shaping a café that feels at home in Manchester’s ‘New Berlin’.

Most modern coffee shops fall into the same trap: sterile interiors, safe branding, and a copy-paste aesthetic. They offer a place to sit, but rarely a reason to stay. In a creative hub like Stockport's Underbanks, playing it safe doesn't cut it.

Over six intense months I led Convene's brand and creative build from scratch, creating a visual identity that balances high-end quality with a warm, community soul. From the core design system to the digital content, I helped a new local icon find its voice, before stepping back to support it in an advisory capacity.

ROLE: CREATIVE & OPERATIONAL CONSULTANCY
CLIENT: CONVENE 2025-26

Curating a Copenhagen-inspired Identity & Experience

In hospitality, there is often a disconnect between the brand promise and the physical reality. A brand can look immaculate on paper and fall apart the moment you walk through the door. At Convene, I treated the identity not as a layer of paint but as the strategic foundation for every part of the business.

I developed a typography-led design system that reworked the cafés of Berlin and Copenhagen into something that made sense for Stockport's Underbanks: a clean, high-conviction aesthetic that ran through everything. Working alongside local architects, I provided creative oversight on the floorplan and interior finishes so the space lived up to the brand. From commercially printed menus to staff apparel, every detail was executed to function as a cohesive engine for brand equity and long-term customer loyalty.

Social Media & Marketing

In a saturated social landscape, high-growth strategies often fail by overwhelming the business they are meant to support. For Convene, I shaped and executed an organic launch strategy that scaled the café from 0 to 6,000+ followers in three months, with zero paid media spend.

Convene's growth was no volume play; it was an exercise in strategic restraint. I built a staggered touchpoint model that purposefully delayed mass exposure, favouring hospitality-focused creators like Manchester's Finest over broad reach. That let us cultivate genuine credibility while keeping demand in step with the kitchen's capacity. To sustain it, I developed a 12-month content roadmap and handled the end-to-end execution, from concept through to post-production, keeping the digital presence as high-conviction as the physical space.

0 to 6k+ followers in 3 months, zero paid spend · £100k+ sales in the first four months · a 30+ table weekend waitlist · coverage in Manchester's Finest, Eat Manchester, Solo Magazine and more.

0 to 6,065 followers · £100k+ sales in the first three months · a 30+ table weekend waitlist · coverage in Manchester's Finest, Eat Manchester, Solo Magazine and more.

within 3 months

A brand is only as good as what it does next. This is a selection of the creative concepts and marketing ideas I've developed with Convene since launch, each built to do a specific job for the business: fill quiet nights, deepen roots in the community, open a new revenue line, or give the café a reason to be talked about.

Telling the story of the owner’s heritage

Every independent café has an origin story, and most of them end up as a paragraph on an About page nobody reads. Convene's owner grew up between Manchester and a garden outside Belgrade, summers spent at a long table where the wine was pressed on site and the food was made to be shared. That's a genuine point of difference in a market full of interchangeable brunch menus.

Balkan Bible turned that heritage into a one-off event for Stockparty. I outlined the concept, wrote the words in the owner's voice, and made the content that promoted it: Balkan flatbreads cooked over fire, natural wines handpicked from the region by her family, poured by the glass. No tickets, no pre-sales, walk-up only. A queue formed more than 20 people deep from the first sale and the whole thing sold out in three hours.

People don't queue for a menu. They queue for a story they want to be part of.

A Copenhagen-inspired café doesn't just serve coffee, it gives a neighbourhood somewhere to belong. That matters commercially, because community fills a room on the days a menu can't.

Equipe Convene is the café's own cycling club. I developed the name, shaped the concept from who it welcomes through to the operational recommendations that made it workable for the team, designed the brand, and built the social strategy and content behind the club and its rides.

25+ riders turned out for the first ride. The schedule is now fuller than the cafe had hoped, because the club was built to welcome every ability rather than the fastest riders in Stockport. Some fast, some slow, all welcome. That's the whole design, and it's why it keeps growing.

Creating a cycling community from a café

A new concept for Stockport: SCOOP

Ideas that come from customer data beat ideas that come from a moodboard. Working through Convene's DMs, emails and customer data alongside wider trend research, I found a gap: a London-inspired concept serving homemade ice cream and gelato alongside regional wines.

Scoop is that concept, developed with owner and head chef Isabella. One pairing each week, available to a limited number of customers, with customers getting a say in what comes next. I built the concept for maximum impact at launch, created the visual brand, produced a range of bespoke posters, and shaped a campaign that turns customers into participants rather than an audience.

Scarcity gets people through the door. Having a say gets them to bring someone. Launching imminently.

Most of Convene's brand talks to someone who wants a Saturday morning brunch. Private hire talks to someone booking a venue for their business, and that person needs a different tone, a different register and a different kind of proof.

I led the café's private event booking function and built its serious face; the strategy, all the marketing material advertising it, and a pitch deck I structured, wrote and designed covering the offer, availability and pricing. Same brand, different voice, aimed at business owners and high-profile clients.

Four events booked in the first two weeks of the system going live, generating £4k+ in revenue from hours the café would otherwise have been closed.

Hosting private events at the café

Client: Convene SK Ltd
Publication date: 2025-26
Role: Creative & Operational Consultancy