FRANCE. Design consultancy Portland has worked with food & beverage operator SSP and Montreux Jazz Café to create a “˜traveller-friendly’ Montreux Jazz Café, which officially opened last month, as reported, at Gare de Lyon.
The design was inspired by the original concept at Harrods, London, which opened in September. Portland then modified that template, to meet the challenge of catering to a vastly different consumer in terms of profile, behaviour and passenger volume (35 million travellers per year pass through this busy train station).
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Montreux Jazz Café at Gare de Lyon Paris was planned and designed by Portland using the Harrods concept, but keeping the traveller in mind |
Operated by SSP, the 1,300sq m café features “˜travelised’ design features brought in by the F&B operator to cater to specific traveller needs. Aside from being a destination experience for locals and visitors to Paris, the Gare de Lyon café concept will also help to upgrade the station’s commercial offer and increase revenue potential by expanding the café’s operations later into the evening, according to Portland.
Portland Director of Environments Lewis Allen said: “The idea of the café is to bring people closer to the experience of what The Montreux Jazz Festival is all about, and the feeling of being personally alive that live music inspires.
“It is essential to make the brand emotionally accessible to people and to emphasise the festival’s focus on uncompromisingly high standards of musical performance, both creatively and acoustically.”
He added: “This concept represents the true convergence of retail, F&B and entertainment whilst reproducing an element of the intimacy and excitement of the festival in a travel retail context.”
The café serves a range of Swiss-inspired drinks and light food. It also has a retail space selling festival-related products such as archive material, DVDs and Montreux Jazz-branded clothes and fashion accessories, as well as posters and seminal graphic art.
In addition to the planning and design, Portland is also handling all of the in-store and café communications.
