Kiln

Wood-fired bread and coffee, branded around the oven.

Year: 2024
Services: Brand identity
Packaging
Signage & menus
Client: Kiln Coffee

Year: 2024
Services: Identity
Packaging
Signage
Client: Kiln Coffee

A long wooden counter under three warm pendant lights

(Overview)

Kiln is a bakery and coffee bar built around a wood-fired oven in a former railway arch in Leeds. The bread sells out by noon; the coffee keeps the room busy all day. The owners wanted to roast and sell their own beans, and needed a brand that could move from a café counter onto a retail shelf.

The oven is the business, so it became the identity: the mark is drawn from the oven’s arched mouth, the palette comes from embers and flour, and the signage is lit warm, at the colour of the fire.

Specialty coffee packaging usually leans clinical: white bags, tasting-note grids, numbered lots. Kiln’s bags are kraft paper with one stamp, closer to a bakery bag than a lab sample.

Kraft coffee bag with an orange Kiln stamp — Fig. 01 — House roast, 250 g. Stamp colour changes with the roast.

A flat white on a cream saucer, seen from above — Fig. 02 — Cups and saucers in the oven’s ash glaze

The oven is the logo.

A scored sourdough loaf on a wooden board — Fig. 03Country loaf. The four-line score is the bakers’ signature and repeats as a pattern on wrapping paper.

(Stamps)

Labelled each morning, by whoever’s on the bench.

Instead of printed labels, the identity runs on a set of rubber stamps: the mark, the roast name, the date. Staff stamp bags and bread wrapping as they pack. It costs a fraction of short-run printing and lets the range change weekly.

Each roast has its own ink colour, so customers can tell blends apart from across the shop.

Film 5am: lighting the oven. Runs on the website homepage and on the screen above the counter.

(Menus & signage)

The menu board is a chalk rail with fixed headings painted in the house lettering and items written by hand each day. Prices are printed on removable strips, so they can change without repainting.

Outside, the arch carries a single illuminated mark at the colour temperature of the oven, visible from the station platform.

Outcome: retail coffee grew to [X]% of revenue within a year of launch.

People take the bag home and it still feels like the bakery.

Head baker & co-owner, Kiln

Credits

Client: Kiln Coffee, Leeds
Identity & packaging: Morrow Studio
Signwriting: [Signwriter name]
Stamps: [Maker name]
Photography & film: [Photographer name]
Photography: [Photographer]

(Overview)

A bakery and coffee bar built around a wood-fired oven in a Leeds railway arch. The owners wanted to roast and sell their own beans, so the brand had to move from counter to shelf.

The oven is the business, so it became the identity: a mark drawn from its arched mouth, a palette of embers and flour.