F&B
Chatelier
In Indonesia, tea is the cheapest thing on the menu. Chatelier sold organic leaf from Japan, China and India, brewed with method and intent — and had inherited a name that said none of it. We renamed it around a single character, 茶, and gave the country a way to see tea differently.
Challenge
The cafe opened as The Thinking Cup — a name built by a previous agency at the height of Jakarta’s thoughtful-cafe trend. It described a mood, not a business. Behind it sat something far more specific: organic teas sourced from Japan, China, India and across Indonesia, white through pu-erh, each brewed by a method that changed what the leaf tasted like. The harder problem was cultural. In Indonesia, teh means es teh manis — sweet, iced, and cheap enough to be an afterthought. Coffee had been culturally elevated. Tea had not.
Approach
The instinct would have been to educate the market about tea. We took the opposite view: arguing that tea deserves a premium means arguing against a price anchor every Indonesian already carries. Better to step outside the category entirely. The new name had to signal a different kind of place before anyone read a menu — not a cafe that happened to serve tea, but a workshop devoted to it. 茶 — cha, the character every word for tea in every language descends from — paired with atelier. Six letters carrying an entire discipline.
The work
Naming and full identity: logo, palette, typography, and a photography direction warm enough to hold the ritual without tipping into tea-room nostalgia. The menu book was built as a catalogue rather than a drinks list — each tea with its origin, character and brewing method, photographed to make steam and colour legible. Visual merchandising followed: the Obi Sash display, wooden pole system, business cards, name tags, shop cards. Digital identity was established across Instagram, Facebook, Google Maps, Zomato and Qraved, then launched with influencer coverage including AnakJajan. As scope widened, the food menu was built for tea pairing — Buddha Bowl, Hokkien Mee Sua, Lava Salmon Skin — and a brewing-equipment line extended the atelier past its own walls.
Outcome
Chatelier opened under its new name, and coverage framed the venue in the language reserved for the city’s specialty coffee rooms: discovery, method, appreciation.