The Summer Menu
This project is one of the most unique experiences I've had, creating a menu from the very beginning to the end.
Concept:
The starting point was simple: we already had a good menu, it just needed a refresh. Then, in the last week of May, my boss asked: "Why don't you come up with a summer menu?"
Short notice. I took it.
With limited time, I set a concept clear enough to hold everything together: fruity and fresh, broad enough for the team to experiment inside it, specific enough to give the menu a recognisable identity.
The real challenge wasn't designing individual cocktails. It was building a collection that worked across completely different moments: after-work drinks on the terrace, tourists escaping the Berlin heat, the regular ordering "just one more" for the third time. The menu needed range and it needed to still feel like one thing.
Leading the Process
Building a full menu in under a week only works one way: the whole team building it together.
I set the concept and direction, then watched the team make it their own almost immediately, bartenders and baristas bringing flavour combinations, the kitchen showing up with unexpected ingredients, everyone tasting, adjusting, debating. My job shifted fast: organising the chaos: narrowing ideas, keeping the concept cohesive, making sure everyone stayed part of the process without losing the thread.
It confirmed something I already knew from design: strong concepts rarely survive alone in a room. They need people pulling in the same direction.
Curation and System
Once the ideas existed, the real work started: curation. Every cocktail added to the menu changed the balance of the whole: spirits, flavour profiles, sweet against fresh against spicy. This is where the project stopped being about individual recipes and became system design: editing, sequencing, making sure each piece reinforced the whole rather than competing with it.
Naming came last, a genuinely chaotic, pun-filled process that somehow produced something cohesive and true to the menu's summer identity.
Visuals
The final layer was translating the concept into what the guest actually sees. I worked closely with the marketing team, in constant back-and-forth, to keep the menu feeling fresh and seasonal while staying inside the venue's existing guidelines.
That direction extended past the menu itself, photoshoot planning, garnish direction (fresh fruit, reinforcing the "fresh" concept across every drink), glassware selection for shape and presentation. Colour, typography, photography, and presentation all had to work as one system, from the printed menu to the glass on the table.
One of the final touches: the place used to keep its curtains closed in summer. We opened them. At night, people walking by started stopping to look inside — and that small shift brought in more local regulars.
Results
The terrace sold out of it, repeatedly. Guests came back specifically to work through the menu, recommended favorites to each other, and the team stayed invested because they'd built it, not just executed it. What started as a cocktail list became a full guest experience and the clearest proof I have that a system holds together when everyone building it understands the concept behind it.
Reflection
Hospitality and design overlap more than I expected going in. Both come down to the same core skill: taking many moving parts: people, timing, ideas, constraints, and shaping them into one clear, intentional experience. This project is one of the clearest examples I have of doing that in real time, under real pressure, with a real team.