Caffè di Marzano
Caffè di Marzano started with a family story: one of its founders grew up in a household that left Italy for the United States but never let go of what they'd left behind. By the time it opened in Chiado in 2019, that story had become a real business problem, one room, but two very different customers, brunch at 9am, drinks at 9pm.
Rather than split it into two brands, I built one identity flexible enough to hold both moods, no second sign, no second logo. And with Lisbon busier and louder than ever, I wanted the space itself to be the answer: step off a crowded street and land somewhere else entirely, a quiet coffeeshop corner of old Manhattan, built to make you stop rushing the second you sit down.
Soft blue and beige, marble tabletops, a traditional typeface, all built so people slow down enough to actually taste their coffee. The menu carried that same thinking: designed like a newspaper, columns instead of lists, a typeface old enough to feel inherited rather than trendy, printed on paper that begged to be picked up and read rather than glanced at. Brunch runs straight through lunch, joined by a short lunch selection rather than replaced by one, no changeover, no closed kitchen, just one menu that grows as the day does.
Nothing physically changes, no new sign, no new logo, but the mood does: the lighting dims, the music shifts toward something jazzier and slower, and the menu turns from coffee to organic wine and considered cocktails, quieter, moodier, built for people stopping in before dinner rather than starting their day.
