Two restaurant managers and a shop in East Lansing.

Biggby Coffee began in East Lansing, Michigan, in 1995 under another name, Beaner’s Coffee. Its co-founders were Bob Fish and Mary Roszel. English Wikipedia says the two met while taking hospitality courses at Michigan State University and first worked together as managers at a Lansing-based restaurant chain called the Flap Jack. The company’s own releases date the first store to 15 March 1995; Wikipedia says it opened in April 1995 on Grand River Avenue in East Lansing, in a building previously occupied by an Arby’s.

The student newspaper The State News reported in September 2007 that Fish, a 1989 Michigan State graduate, had based the original name on the coffee bean. A company release dated 31 August 2012 said Roszel “helped to conceive the brand and open the first store,” and set out her route into the business: originally from Ann Arbor, she came to the Lansing area to earn a paralegal degree from Lansing Community College, worked for the Michigan Supreme Court and, after raising her children, completed a bachelor’s degree in hospitality business at Michigan State. In the early days, the release said, Fish and Roszel made the drinks and talked with customers from behind the counter themselves.

Wikipedia says a second store opened in downtown Lansing in 1997, and that a corporate office followed in Lansing a year later, allowing sales of bulk coffee. It says that Fish, Roszel and Michael McFall — first hired by Roszel as a barista in the original store — founded Global Orange Development in June 1998 to franchise the company, and that a third location opened in August 1999, also on Grand River Avenue in East Lansing. The franchised chain then spread through Michigan and Ohio, Wikipedia says, and The State News reported that it moved beyond the Midwest in 2005, with stores in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

Renaming the chain, 2007 to 2008.

In September 2007 the company announced it would change its name. The State News, in a report by Craig Trudell dated 17 September 2007, said that after increasing complaints from customers that the name mirrored a slur aimed at Latin Americans, Beaner’s Coffee would become Biggby Coffee by 31 January 2008. The paper said Fish had not been aware of the slur when he settled on the original name, and quoted him: “There is an objective in business to be inclusive and not exclusive.” He added that the original choice “was exclusive, and it needs to be inclusive.”

The company’s release of 18 September 2007, republished by Franchising.com, described how the new name was found. It said an outside consultant had been retained to help with a naming process that lasted a year, and that BIGGBY was identified as a favoured choice. The release called the word a literal interpretation and a phonetic spelling of the large orange letter “B” that had become the company’s icon and appeared on all its signs, cups and other merchandise. The State News described the same mark as an orange and black letter “B” and said it had inspired the new name. Wikipedia adds that Biggby is pronounced “big B.”

The changeover was staged in public view. The State News reported that the rebranding would begin with cups, shirts and other merchandise inside the stores and be followed by changes to the outdoor signs, and that Fish wanted to explain the change to existing customers first, saying he hoped it would start conversations about such words. The paper quoted a Michigan State graduate student, originally from Venezuela, who called the change a “sign of respect.” Fish told the paper that the chain’s expansion into southern states had nothing to do with the decision. Wikipedia says the chain was officially renamed Biggby Coffee by January 2008.

The founding partnership changed in 2012. Roszel announced her retirement as the company’s vice-president in August that year, and the company’s release identified Fish as chief executive and co-founder. In the release Fish thanked her for the hours she had spent “getting us where we are today,” and Roszel recalled the first store, where customers in the early days were likely to be served by one of the two founders. Wikipedia describes Biggby Coffee today as a coffeehouse franchise based in Lansing, Michigan.

Design and documentation.

Coffee-house and deli chains carry their identity on many surfaces at once. A name and a mark sit on the street sign and the shopfront, then repeat on paper cups, sleeves, lids, carry-out bags, sandwich wraps and loyalty cards, and again on the menu board above the counter. Each of those surfaces is printed or built by different suppliers, often in different places, so a chain’s visual system has to survive changes of material, size and colour reproduction.

The menu board is where much of the design work shows. It has to hold a name, prices and category headings at reading distance, and over the past two decades many chains have moved from printed panels to screens, which changes how type, colour and photography are used. Interiors carry the identity too: counter fronts, seating, lighting, wall graphics and the colour of the walls themselves are part of how a chain presents its name.

Each guide below looks at who started the brand, who owns it now and how its name and mark appear, separating what independent dated sources record from what the company says about itself.

A letter that became a word.

The Biggby identity grew out of a mark that came before the name. The company’s 2007 release said the large orange letter B was already its icon, printed on signs, cups and merchandise, when the chain went looking for a new name; the name it chose spells out how that letter is said aloud. The State News recorded the colours of that letter in 2007 as orange and black. The renaming kept the mark customers already knew and replaced the word around it.

The company has also described its tone of voice. Its 2012 release said the business was founded on the idea that coffee lovers and the coffee-curious would benefit from a less pretentious approach to the gourmet café, and that it introduced drinks with pronounceable names such as Teddy Bear and Caramel Marvel. The same release said baristas surprised guests with small gestures such as handing out free kazoos, and the company described its founding ideals as being happy, having fun, making friends and loving people.

The name change itself has become part of the brand’s documented history. The State News reported the order of the switch — cups, shirts and merchandise first, outdoor signs afterwards — and the company’s release described the search for the word as a year-long process with an outside consultant. Wikipedia dates the official change to January 2008.

For a design guide, Biggby Coffee shows how a single letter can carry a brand through a change of name: the orange B stayed on the cup while the word around it was replaced and spelled out from the letter itself. Compare it with Caribou Coffee, another Midwestern coffeehouse chain, and Dutch Bros, the Oregon drive-thru chain founded in 1992. For this guide we use B orange, espresso black and foam with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Biggby Coffee’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.