Lee’s Donuts
Status
Completed 2020
Location
Vancouver, BC
Builder
Pacific Solutions Contracting
Photography
Upper Left Photography
The Brief
Refresh a legacy Vancouver business experiencing record popularity without cutting ties to its important heritage and character.
Legacy
Lee’s Donuts is an institution at Granville Island Public Market since it’s opening, serving the local community and visitors to Vancouver alike for four decades. The facility had not received a major upgrade since its establishment in 1979. A feature in Netflix’s “Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner” with David Chang and Seth Rogan only added to Lee’s Donuts’ popular legacy, increasing demand for an already strained production and service capacity.
Efficiency
The challange of increasing productivity within an already restricting kitchen footprint required careful observation of Lee’s Donuts’ daily operation. The solution involved rationalizing the donut-making process into a series of steps, establishing the associated space and equipment requirements for each step, and organizing them into a looped array that minimized the movement of people and product, eliminating unnecessary cross traffic in the restricted space.
Precision
Another goal for the client in the renovation was to increase the amount and diversity of product display. A central millwork unit was precisely detailed to allow for the appealing and flexible arrangement of trays and boxes in ways that accommodate peak sales inventory but avoid looking bare as product supply dwindles.
Branding
A challange that influenced every aspect of the design was that of maintaining the retro charm of a 40-year-old business when completely replacing its fixtures and finishes. The importance of the client’s brand is evident, with legacy colours, fonts, and logos providing the connection between the historical and the contemporary. Lee’s Donuts’ colour scheme of primary green, yellow, and white is used throughout the project on millwork and bulkhead finishes. The original logo and font are given a contemporary twist with laser-cut plywood signage elements at the storefront. The overall result of these efforts to balance old and new is a store that at once comforts and excites longtime customers.
Photo Gallery
