Lord of the Fries inhabits a niche somewhere between fast food and health food. On the one hand the product is completely vegetarian and customised to order. On the other, the main component is potato twice cooked in oil, salted and slathered in your choice of sauce. What is the point of this?

Well sometimes interior design has to wrestle with a number of conflicting and completely contradictory ideas. In the case of a food or retail offering in a roll out, it also needs to express a clear and instantly recognisable identity that can be applied to a number of diverse sites.

This was precisely the brief for the new architectural identity of Lord of the Fries. This project began with an holistic approach to brand. Byron George Architects were asked to design a new look for the stores, look at the way the kitchen functioned from a production point of view, redesign the menu boards and review the fundamental experience of visiting a Lord of the Fries Store.

Their clients came to them with the words “future diner”. Byron George Architects concept images featured an abandoned container dumped in

burnt out urban wasteland and a tiled subway underpass. Both of these images spoke of gritty urban spaces that were also designed to be incredibly resilient, a key component of the brief.

They decided to use a number of simple elements:

1. The Red Container - using LOTF’s signature colour, this housed all POS and BOH areas.
2. The Graphic Lighting - iInexpensive, off the shelf fluoro battens or neon in a pattern as a visual graphic drawing people in.
3. -Tiled Benches - a series of tiled tables and benches, fixed for all seating.
4. Graphic Artwork - artist Brendan Elliot provided iconic artwork for each store based on the concept of “future diner” and outer space.

These have all been repeated in various configurations from the large store model (Northland), to the laneway model (Melbourne Central) and the retail mall model (Chadstone)