6 Café & Coffee Shop Signs Made to Order

THE POPULARITY OF coffee from shops — even pumpkin-spice lattes! — continues unabated. Thus, competition among omnipresent cafés can be as brisk as a double-shot espresso, so coffee shop signs need to differentiate, identify, attract and welcome customers better than the shops down the street. We think you’ll find the half dozen projects shown here by members of our Brain Squad go as well with coffee as if they were donuts.

Specially Gound

Gathering Grounds (Russells Point, OH) had been a client of FastTrack Signs (Bellefontaine, OH) for many years, but recently changed ownership. “It is often tricky to maintain business when ownership changes — we often don’t even know of the change,” FastTrack’s Dennis Shaub says, “but we were fortunate here.” The client, experienced in graphics, provided the design for a basic laminated 3M counter wrap. Schaub and his wife installed the wrap in about an hour, dodging customers during the “slow time of day,” he says.

Fine Designing

City Café Diner became “a brand-new customer gained the old-fashioned way — through persistence,” according to Ted Neelands, DBM Signage & Branding, both in Chattanooga, TN. The client provided storefront drawings and their logo, which Lead Designer Josh Neelands developed into a package of cabinet and projecting signs. DBM’s contract production team built the signs of aluminum-tube framing with aluminum faces and returns. Both types use illuminated .75-in. push-through accents, with internally illuminated white LEDs. The cabinet sign also features 5-in.-deep channel letters clip-mounted to the face. “We’re most proud that our design work closed the deal,” Ted Neelands says.

Jonesin’ for Caffeine

Gary Johnson, Great American Sign Co. (Basking Ridge, NJ), made a sign as a sample for his shop several years ago. “It was so admired by a local coffee shop that I was making a [different] sign for, they decided they had to have it,” he says. Johnson designed it using Gerber Omega and carved it into Coastal Enterprises Precision Board using SAi EnRoute on his MultiCam router, but it also required a lot of hand-carving. He finished the piece with Modern Masters Metallic Paints and Sculpt Nouveau Bronze Metal Coating for the coffee beans.

Sweet-Sweet Sourdough

Referred to Ad Art (San Francisco) by one of their customers in the space next door, Little Sky Bakery (Menlo Park, CA) collaborated with Art Director Aubrey Zhu on the design of both a sign and full-window graphic. The sign comprises aluminum with polycarbonate faces decorated with digitally printed vinyl. “Probably the most challenging aspect was getting the permit approved through the City of Menlo Park,” says Ad Art’s Mike McClure. “The process took much longer than it should have, but at least I got to eat a lot of great sourdough bread.”

Worth the Drive

Whistle Stop Bakery & Coffee Shop in Shelby, MT, located 90 miles north of CAT Graphics (Great Falls, MT), saw a hometown sign CAT had done and checked their website. The original concept for neon was changed, going instead with a shop-designed sheet-metal can with LEDs, lexan face and digitally printed 3M vinyl with laminate. The face has black trim cap and the circular back was cut on a CNC router. “We use automotive paint for longevity,” CAT Graphics owner Carey Gray says, adding it took longer to drive there than to install the sign.

Company You Keep

Thwarted by a city ordinance against illumination in a dimensional sign, SpeedPro Affinity Solutions (Sarasota, FL) created the sign shown for Sarasota’s The Breakfast Company. The client provided the logo, specifying only that “Est. 2020” be gold, says SpeedPro’s Steve Rowe. The sign is built on an ACM backer with a ½-in. PVC border and copy mounted to the face. The shop CNC-router-cut the elements, then painted both the backer and PVC. “This project gave us the opportunity to use our new certification with PPG for Matthews Paints,” Rowe adds.

PHOTO GALLERY (32 IMAGES)