Small Victory bakery's third location features unique, local designs
Something of a hidden gem on the main floor of The Amazing Brentwood shopping mall in North Burnaby is Small Victory, a family-run eatery specializing in coffee and bread. This is its third location.
The crack design team behind this outfit are Emma Sims and Darcy Hanna of Vancouver design firm &Daughters.
Both Sims and Hanna have a master's degree in architecture from the University of British Columbia, and it shows in Small Victory's Brentwood location.
The bakery's interior features large, concrete tile and grey stone that blends in with the mall where it's located. The coffee bar is clad in grey stone and features under-counter espresso machines, allowing for a “barrier-free experience” between customers and staff.
Sims and Hanna chose warm accents, like brass and wood, layered over harder materials to tell the story of the place — coffee and bread. The patina of the coffee bar's backsplash, menu boards and purse hooks was created with a coffee immersion technique.
&Daughters worked with an amazing metal worker to create the patina, says Sims. “He came up with this idea that we could submerge the brass in the used coffee grounds from the existing stores, and that kind of transformed the brass really quickly into having this patina.”
One of the standout design features in this bakery is an inverted wheat installation that hangs over the central bar area. It softens the look of the large concrete pillars that are part of the building design, and draws people toward the middle of the space to create a hub of interaction between patrons and staff, says Sims.
“We wanted something to warm up the space because so much of the materials are kind of cold,” she says.
The wheat installation also absorbs sound in an otherwise quite hard space.
The design duo used a lot of wood, such as raw cherry wood blocky chairs in earthy tones, to mimic the richness and simplicity of coffee.
As a firm, &Daughters loves to work with local designers and makers, says Sims. New Format studio helped with metal fabrication on this project, Bynature provided the wheat installation, and Lock & Mortice designed and made the seating. The goal for this location was to build on the existing design language used in Small Victory's other locations but take the design to another level, focusing specifically on elements that reflect coffee and bread, says Sims.
Since this Brentwood location opened at the end of 2021, &Daughters and Small Victory are now collaborating on a fourth location at Sixth Avenue and Yukon Street in Vancouver.
Sims and Hanna launched &Daughters five years ago.
To date, they have mostly worked on hospitality and retail design projects.
“Our work is kind of a split between those kinds of projects. We do some houses, some shops and cafés. I really like the fact we get to do both,” says Sims.