When a café sits between a residential neighbourhood and MTR-driven daily foot traffic, it does not need to become a city landmark. Instead, it needs to become a place that residents are willing to pass by, pause at, and return to as part of everyday life.
Grove Sandwiches @ Liberté Place is located in Lai Chi Kok, Hong Kong. Completed in 2023, the project covers approximately 1,600 sq.ft.
Unlike Grove’s other locations in universities, sports venues or premium commercial buildings, this project carries a more neighbourhood-oriented character.
It is not defined by a landmark setting, a campus culture or a destination view. Instead, it sits within a community retail environment, serving a more everyday group of users: nearby residents, office workers, students, families, MTR commuters and shoppers who may only pause briefly within the mall.
For this reason, the value of the space does not come from dramatic design gestures. It comes from stability, clarity and approachability.
In a residential neighbourhood mall in Hong Kong, a café often needs to support multiple daily scenarios at once: morning coffee and breakfast, quick lunch service, afternoon tea, after-work takeaway, or a simple place for residents to sit down between errands.
Grove Sandwiches @ Liberté Place was created within this everyday rhythm — a cleaner, brighter and easier-to-use neighbourhood café.
The design needed to make the brand immediately visible, while avoiding an atmosphere that felt too commercial or distant. Grove’s sandwiches, coffee and casual dining offer naturally carry a sense of lightness, health and everyday comfort. The space extends this character through a simple, bright and orderly café environment that responds to the daily use of a community mall.
With approximately 1,600 sq.ft. of floor area, the project is not a kiosk, but a café with meaningful dine-in capacity. It needs to support takeaway, dine-in, short waiting, casual meet-ups and family use. Compared with smaller food counters that focus mainly on quick service, this project required a more careful balance between operational efficiency and comfort.
The completed Grove Sandwiches @ Liberté Place is more than a sandwich shop.
It is a café that connects brand freshness, neighbourhood living, MTR foot traffic and everyday dining needs into one approachable space.
It allows the café to become not just a point of consumption, but a stable, bright and familiar place within the residential community.
Project details
Construction Duration
~3 months
Location
Liberte Place, Hong Kong
Signature materials
Light timber veneer / wood-effect laminate
White solid surface counter
Neutral wall finishes
Light-colour floor tiles
Painted metal details
Clear glass frontage
Integrated LED lighting
Brand signage
Built-in service counter
Loose dining furniture
Durable, easy-clean F&B finishes
Area
1600 sqft.
Year
2023
CONCEPT & DESIGN INTENT
The design of a neighbourhood café should not only be about looking attractive. It should allow the space to work naturally across different times of day, different users and different daily routines.
The design concept for Grove Sandwiches @ Liberté Place was to create a clear, approachable and long-lasting community-based café.
In major commercial landmarks, F&B spaces often need to create strong visual impact. In universities or sports venues, they must respond to specific traffic peaks and usage patterns. But in a neighbourhood mall, what matters most is everyday usability.
Everyday usability may seem simple, but it is often the most demanding.
A community café does not mainly serve one-time visitors. It serves local users who pass by repeatedly, use the space frequently and are sensitive to comfort, practicality and convenience. The space cannot be too complicated or too cold. It cannot feel too much like fast food, yet it should not feel overly premium. It needs to be fresh, but also warm; branded, but not distant.
Grove Sandwiches fits naturally into this kind of setting.
Sandwiches, coffee, light meals and casual dining create a dining language that is informal, comfortable and more refined than a conventional fast-food stop. The design needed to strengthen these qualities: allowing customers to buy quickly, sit down for a simple lunch, stop briefly alone, or use the café casually with friends or family.
The spatial concept can be understood as clean everyday comfort.
A bright palette helps the café remain visible within the mall environment. A clear counter and menu system allow customers to understand the ordering process quickly. An orderly seating arrangement supports a comfortable dine-in experience. Durable, low-maintenance materials allow the space to withstand high-frequency everyday use.
The real design value of this project is not found in strong sculptural gestures.
It lies in making an everyday café feel stable, clear, comfortable and easy to return to.
That is the essence of a neighbourhood F&B space.
SPATIAL STRATEGY / PLANNING LOGIC
In a community mall, an F&B space must support quick takeaway, casual dine-in, short waiting and repeated daily use — not just one single dining scenario.
The spatial strategy for Grove Sandwiches @ Liberté Place is centred on daily foot traffic and neighbourhood usage patterns.
Liberté Place is located within the Lai Chi Kok transport network and near Lai Chi Kok MTR Station. The retail mall sits beneath a residential development of seven residential towers, meaning the café serves not only mall visitors, but also residents and regular commuters.
Frontage Visibility
Customer decisions in a community mall often happen quickly.
Someone may pass by after grocery shopping, or decide to buy takeaway while walking home from the MTR. The frontage, signage, menu and service counter therefore need to be direct and clear, allowing people to understand immediately that this is a café for sandwiches, coffee and light meals.
Takeaway and Dine-in in Parallel
Grove Sandwiches cannot serve only dine-in customers, nor can it function purely as a takeaway counter.
Morning and lunch peaks may focus more on quick purchases, while afternoons and quieter periods may involve more short-stay dining. The space needs to ensure that takeaway customers do not block dine-in circulation, and that seated customers are not disrupted by queuing traffic.
Seating Efficiency and Comfort
The 1,600 sq.ft. area allows the café to provide a meaningful seating experience.
However, seating in a neighbourhood café should not feel overly dense. The space must remain easy to use for different groups: solo diners, pairs, families, casual meetings or short breaks. The seating arrangement therefore needs to remain flexible, while keeping circulation and service routes clear.
Counter and Service Flow
For a sandwich and coffee café, speed and accuracy are essential.
The counter must allow customers to place orders efficiently, while staff need a smooth workflow for preparation, packing and pick-up. In a community café, consistency is more important than drama. Returning customers often come back because every visit feels simple, smooth and reliable.
A Sense of Everyday Pause
Grove Sandwiches @ Liberté Place is not only a grab-and-go location.
Within a residential neighbourhood, a café can become a small public living room — not a formal gathering place, but somewhere to sit down for a coffee, have a sandwich, wait for a friend, or take a short break during daily errands.
The value of the planning lies in bringing dining efficiency and neighbourhood comfort into the same space, rather than prioritising one at the expense of the other.
GALLERY
MATERIALITY & DETAILING
The material language of a community café does not need to be overly expressive, but it must be clean, durable, easy to maintain and able to preserve the brand’s freshness through long-term daily use.
As the original project page does not currently list detailed signature materials, the following material direction is developed based on Grove Sandwiches’ brand positioning, the community café context and the practical needs of a 1,600 sq.ft. F&B space.
The material strategy for Grove Sandwiches @ Liberté Place should be understood through four key ideas: clean, bright, durable and approachable.
Bright Backgrounds
Bright wall and counter finishes help the café feel fresh within the mall environment.
This also aligns with the identity of a sandwich, coffee and light-meal brand, allowing the food itself to appear cleaner, fresher and more accessible.
Warm Timber or Natural Textures
A neighbourhood café needs a certain level of warmth.
Timber or natural-textured elements can soften the colder atmosphere often found in mall interiors, helping customers feel more relaxed. This is especially important in a residential community, where users are not one-time visitors but local customers who may return repeatedly.
Durable F&B Surfaces
Counters, tabletops, wall bases and high-contact areas require durable, easy-to-clean and low-maintenance materials.
A community store experiences steady daily use. Long-term performance matters more than short-term visual impact. Good material choices should look clean not only on opening day, but after repeated use over time.
Clear Lighting
Lighting needs to support food display, ordering, dining and atmosphere at the same time.
Lighting that is too cold can make a café feel like fast food. Lighting that is too dim does not work well for everyday neighbourhood dining. A soft but bright lighting strategy allows the space to feel approachable while keeping products and menus clearly visible.
Brand Signage
Grove’s brand signage should be clear, but not overly forceful.
In a neighbourhood setting, the best form of brand presence is stable and natural. Customers should recognise and remember the café easily, without the signage overwhelming the everyday atmosphere of the mall.
The overall material direction does not aim for the drama of a flagship location.
Instead, it allows the space to remain clean, comfortable, orderly and consistent with the Grove brand through daily use.
That is the most important kind of refinement for a community café.
PROJECT GOALS & OUTCOMES
A successful neighbourhood café does not only allow customers to buy a sandwich. It becomes a natural, reliable and easy-to-return-to place within the residential community.
The main goal of the project was to create a Grove Sandwiches café that could serve the everyday life of Liberté Place and its surrounding neighbourhood.
With approximately 1,600 sq.ft. of space, the completed café accommodates sandwiches, coffee, light meals, dine-in and takeaway services, offering a clearer and more comfortable dining option for nearby residents and commuters in Lai Chi Kok.
For Grove Sandwiches, this project is more than a branch expansion.
It is an important example of how the brand can enter a neighbourhood mall setting. In this context, the brand needs to become more everyday, more approachable and more naturally connected to local life. Compared with a landmark location, a community store tests whether a space is genuinely usable — because customers may not come for a special occasion, but as part of their daily routine.
For Liberté Place, Grove Sandwiches adds a modern, fresh and casual F&B offer to the mall, giving residents and nearby users a convenient yet well-considered place to pause.
For Enoch Deco, this project shows how we approach F&B design within a community retail setting: not through excessive design expression, but through clear planning, durable materials and an atmosphere that allows the brand to become part of everyday life.
The completed Grove Sandwiches @ Liberté Place transforms a sandwich café into a small but meaningful daily node within the neighbourhood.
It provides not only food, but also a place where residents, commuters and mall users can briefly pause within the rhythm of the day.
COLLABORATION & CONSTRAINTS
The key challenge was to complete a café that could support everyday neighbourhood traffic while maintaining Grove’s brand identity within the operating conditions of a community mall.
Grove Sandwiches @ Liberté Place was completed within approximately three months, covering around 1,600 sq.ft. as an F&B fit-out within a mall environment.
The constraints of a mall-based F&B project extend beyond interior design.
First, construction timing and mall management requirements are critical.
Material delivery, noise control, protective works, fire services, MEP connections, public area use and site cleanliness all need to comply with mall regulations. In an operating neighbourhood mall, construction must consider not only the project’s own schedule, but also its impact on nearby tenants and daily shoppers.
Second, there are F&B technical requirements.
Even for a café focused on sandwiches and coffee, the project still needs to address water supply, drainage, electrical load, refrigeration, food preparation, ventilation, fire safety and hygiene requirements. These systems must be integrated behind a clean front-of-house appearance, allowing the space to feel simple while functioning properly.
Third, long-term neighbourhood use is important.
Unlike event venues or university cafés with concentrated peak traffic, community mall foot traffic is more spread out, more continuous and more dependent on repeat customers. This means the space cannot rely only on opening-day appeal. It must remain comfortable, durable and easy to maintain over time.
Finally, brand consistency is essential.
Grove Sandwiches has an established tone of freshness, health and casual comfort. The Liberté Place store needed to continue this identity while responding to the community-based nature of the site. It should not feel overly premium, but it also should not feel too basic.
The success of the project lies in focusing on the elements that most directly affect user experience: a clear frontage, smooth counter flow, comfortable seating, bright lighting and durable materials.
This project demonstrates the value of neighbourhood F&B design.
It may not require the strongest design gesture, but it does require the most stable, accurate and everyday-sensitive spatial decisions.
GROVE SANDWICHES
LIBERTE PLACE
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