THE BRIEF

The Common Good Café is a social enterprise operation of the Prince Charles Hospital Foundation, bringing fresh meals, coffee and essentials to the staff, patients and families of the Caboolture Hospital.  

As part of their social enterprise model, all donations from the public are channelled directly to several teams collecting and facilitating breakthrough medical research in the areas of heart disease, lung disease, mental health and ageing.  

The Foundation’s research areas consist of health issues that touch nearly every patron and member of their community in some way, with a mission to sustain the work of their researchers to continue to make lifesaving and life-changing medical research advances well into the future.  

For this project studiospillane worked with the Common Good and the QLD Health team to deliver a commercial kitchen to prepare fresh and healthy meals, an approachable service counter with food, drink and retail displays, and a coffee counter and pick up station. Its indoor and outdoor dining spaces allow patrons to take a moments rest to enjoy their coffee, catch up with colleagues and take a simple moment to decompress and unwind throughout what might be a stressful day. 

OUR APPROACH

The café occupies a relatively constrained space within the lobby and adjacent the entry to the building. The clients were rightly concerned about customer flow through the café in peak periods, and causing congestion within the lobby when people were waiting for coffees or pre ordered food. 

Our first step was to interrogate the planning and create an organic shape which naturally pulled people into the café, encouraging them to queue from the inside out – so that people would end by waiting for their coffee at the natural collection zone. App order collections were pushed around the corner allowing a separate queue and wait for these express and regular customers. The work flow in the kitchen is laid out to support the public side of the counter. Coffee pickup on one side and public queuing on the other makes it quicker for the medical staff to collect their coffee on what are often short breaks.  

THE RESULTS

The overall goal was for the palette and aesthetic of the café to “Creating a common ground for the common good”.  

Warm materials blend well with the palette of the lobby and help make the café a part of the community. Messaging, such as “help power life-changing medical research” is repeated at various points to remind people that their money goes to a great initiative.  

The outcome is lighthearted, simple, and warm.