Premier Hospitality

Cat’s Pyjamas

Cat’s Pyjamas
Written by Roma Publications

The Cat’s Pyjamas

Popular Indian street food brand The Cat’s Pyjamas is expanding further into Yorkshire with the opening of two new venues – one in York and one in Wakefield.

The Cat’s Pyjamas was founded by Scottish entrepreneur Alison White to celebrate Indian street food culture and introduce it to a wider audience. Having first opened in Headingley in 2015, the brand’s popularity soon necessitated the opening of a second site in Leeds city centre. The Cat’s Pyjamas menu was developed by Alison alongside Alfred Prasad, the youngest Indian chef to win a Michelin star, and is bursting with sumptuous flavours and tastes.

The vibrant food is mirrored by colourful interiors that will be replicated at the new York and Wakefield sites. To help with the interior design of these sites, Alison teamed up with award-winning brand design agency Mystery. Mystery has also worked on refining and evolving The Cat’s Pyjamas branding to help create a coherent message across the four sites.

Premier Hospitality recently spoke to Shan Rees from Mystery about the work:

“The Cat’s Pyjamas has quite a distinct personality already. It’s all based on the Indian street market and obviously that lends itself to some existing thought in terms of what the interiors and branding would be. Mystery has taken that and workshopped it with Alison to hone the look and feel of the branding and the interiors. It’s really a contemporary take on Indian street markets.

“The branding aspect of the work involved taking Alison’s existing graphics and identity and evolving it. We had to come up with a suite of graphics that had got a lot more personality, were a bit more contemporary and defined her brand DNA a lot more.”

Naturally, the interior design takes its lead from Indian street market culture to create a rustic and raw atmosphere. This includes materials such as corrugated iron and wood. The use of bold and bright colours is similarly important in the design, mirroring the Holi festival, and makes for a dynamic and youthful feel that is reflective of the food on offer.

Shan added:

“It’s great when we work with brands that have got a real vision, want to make a splash within their sector and are looking to grow. What we are all about as well is helping clients create scalable projects and this is one of them. Once you get the core DNA of a brand sorted, the idea then is that you can build on that and you can help them roll out. It doesn’t matter what size space they move into or how many sites they want to open, having a scalable brand makes this a lot easier. Hopefully we will be able to continue to work with Alison as she opens more and more sites.”

The Cat’s Pyjamas York opened to the public on the 10th May. The Cat’s Pyjamas Wakefield will open in a few months’ time and will be followed by a fifth site in Harrogate later in the summer. To find out more, please visit www.thecatspjs.co.uk.

 

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Roma Publications