A Japanese chocolate company sought out BBA to design a flagship for their expansion to America’s West Coast. As their company focuses on carefully crafted, high-quality natural products, they came to us for our aligned values, retail design expertise and our experience creating successful food and drink destinations.

We collaborated with the chocolatier’s international team to develop two concepts: retail only, and retail plus production. The latter embodies their ‘bean-to-bar’ philosophy—to house the entire chocolate-making process in-house—by integrating a state-of-the-art factory with a customer experience component for production viewing, alongside café, retail and workshop spaces.

Our design approach blended Japanese precision with California humanism and warmth to create an environment that encourages customers to linger and learn about the artisanal chocolate-making process.