Just Eat — Festival Pick-Up Station at Zürich Openair

Brand activation · Just Eat pick-up station · Zürich Openair and Frauenfeld, Switzerland · July–August 2024

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Most of our work happens inside exhibition halls. There the floor is flat, the power is planned and the weather is somebody else’s problem. This one did not. Just Eat needed a food pick-up station on a festival field at Zürich Openair. It stood open to the sky, on grass, and ran from early afternoon until well after dark.

A different set of constraints

A trade fair stand is protected. A festival structure is not. This one had to cope with direct sun, overnight damp, uneven ground and a crowd that touches everything. Furthermore, it had to be legible from a distance, at night, to people who are not looking for it.

The structure sits on a raised timber deck with an access ramp. That solves the uneven-ground problem and keeps the serving floor clean and level. The canopy is a fixed pitched frame rather than a pop-up. As a result, it holds its line across four days instead of sagging by day two.

Perforated brand panels

The most distinctive element is the screening. Panels carry the Just Eat house icon, perforated and repeated hundreds of times. By day they read as a graphic pattern in the brand orange. After dark, lit from behind, the same panels turn into a wall of glowing house symbols. In effect, the brand mark does the work of signage without a single extra light box.

Built to be seen after dark

Festival trading peaks at night. Therefore we fitted a neon-style illuminated sign above the roofline, warm festoon lighting through the serving area, and LED strips down the frame edges. The structure changes character between afternoon and midnight. Even so, it never stops being recognisably Just Eat.

Designed around a queue

The whole point of the station was to remove queueing. Visitors order in the app and collect. So the counter is long and open. The collection side sits apart from the ordering side, and the back-of-house shelving holds bagged orders in view. Instructional graphics in Swiss German explain the flow in three steps on the front panel.

Why this one matters

It shows the workshop doing something other than a hall stand. This was an outdoor brand activation, engineered for weather and night use, delivered in Switzerland. The same joinery, lighting and graphics capability applies. However, the constraints are harsher.

It is also a Swiss project where the same stand elements were reused across more than one festival in a single summer.

Two participations, the same stand elements

The same structure was used twice in one summer — Zürich Openair and Frauenfeld — built once and rebuilt on a second site. The raised deck, the pitched canopy frame and the serving counters carried across both; the graphics and the layout changed to suit each field.

That is the part worth noting. A festival structure that survives one weekend is a cost. One engineered to be dismantled, transported and rebuilt at a second event in the same season is an asset — the client paid for the build once and appeared twice.

What the structure was made of

The signed specification set the station at 25 m²: a hybrid wooden structure painted in Just Eat orange, with a white fabric canopy on top. The perforated panels are metal jaali (lattice) work, a customised entrance wall and a railing along one side, both spray-painted in the same orange, which is why they glow so evenly once the lights behind them come on.

The serving counter was custom-built in wood, lockable and fitted with shelves, finished in orange spray paint with LED strips and a 3D edge-lit logo. Behind it, a lockable pantry with shelving racks held stock and bagged orders, and a fabric graphic, white racks, a custom white table and live plants finished the space. Above the roofline, a 3D backlit logo and further edge-lit logos carried the brand, with hanging lights inside the booth for the evening trade.

The specification allowed two days to build on each site, so every part had to go up and come down quickly without losing its finish: on grass, in the open, with the next event only weeks away.

Planning an outdoor activation or a festival build? See our work in Switzerland or request a quotation.

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