Blank Street Brand Guidelines: A 2020 Brooklyn Coffee Cart, Pastel Green & London

A 50-square-foot cart in Williamsburg.

Blank Street began as a coffee cart in Brooklyn. Restaurant Business reported in November 2022 that Vinay Menda and Issam Freiha launched it in August 2020 from a cart of about 50 square feet, with the aim of building a brand around a simple menu of specialty coffee at a more accessible price than higher-end shops. The company says the cart stood in the garden of the Wythe Diner in Williamsburg. The Caterer described Freiha in April 2026 as a former venture capital investor.

The first shop with walls followed in February 2021, according to Restaurant Business; City A.M. placed that first shop in Williamsburg in 2021, after nearly a year in the cart. By November 2022 the chain had about 45 shops in New York, two open in Washington, D.C., more coming in Boston and ten in London, Restaurant Business reported. Its investors reportedly included General Catalyst, Tiger Global and the founders of Allbirds and Warby Parker; The Caterer later added Left Lane Capital to that list of backers.

The model rested on small units. The average shop was about 400 square feet and could run with two baristas a shift, Menda told the magazine, using semi-automated Eversys espresso machines that let staff pour several shots at once while facing the customer instead of turning their backs. Food came from local suppliers. In August 2022 the company began roasting its own beans, having relied on local roasters at first, to keep the coffee consistent across its cities. Its signature blend, Speed Dial, mixes naturally processed coffee from Brazil with washed coffee from Nicaragua, the company told Restaurant Business that year. Menda said then that there were no immediate plans to franchise.

Fitzrovia, Shoreditch and the matcha menu.

London came quickly. The Caterer reported that Blank Street launched in the UK in 2022 with sites in Fitzrovia and Shoreditch, and City A.M. dated the first London shop to the summer of that year. By October 2023 the chain had 24 London stores, City A.M. reported; its UK managing director, Ignacio Lladó, previously managing director at the Asian chain Flash Coffee, met the paper at its Tottenham Court Road site. By April 2026 The Caterer counted more than 50 Blank Street locations in the UK. The company’s own website now says it has opened more than 100 shops across the US and UK.

Lladó explained the London format in terms of space and atmosphere. Shops of about 300 to 600 square feet kept costs down, he said in 2023, and the automated espresso machines meant staff needed less training and could concentrate on the people in front of them. He said Blank Street aimed for a visit of two to three minutes. The company also said it would not install electronic ordering screens in its shops. Busier sites, such as those in Canary Wharf, had more staff on hand, he added.

Matcha became the drink most associated with the brand in London. City A.M. described the chain in 2023 as a mint green business with a long list of matcha cold brews, and reported in October 2025 that its blueberry matcha, launched in 2024, had become a social media trend. The same article listed the chain’s collaborations: a surprise in-store event with the singer Sabrina Carpenter, a month-long padel pop-up at Battersea Power Station and a maple matcha drink with the stylist behind Melissa’s Wardrobe, sold as a secret-menu item. By 2025 the paper was describing Lladó as a co-founder.

Counters, cups and shop fronts.

Coffee-shop chains are brands people meet at the counter. The cup handed over, the sleeve around it, the menu board behind the barista and the sign over the door all carry the name, and the companies show them in their own photographs and on their own websites. A chain that buys another often keeps the second name on the shop front, so one owner can run several looks on the same high street.

Naming is usually plain and close to the product. Chains name house blends, seasonal drinks and loyalty schemes in their own voice, borrow words from Italian or from their home language, and describe store formats by where they sit: high streets, railway and underground stations, airports, shopping centres and, more recently, drive-throughs. Some keep a single format; others add kiosks and cafés inside other retailers.

Ownership is where the stories diverge. Many chains began with one café and a founder, then passed through private equity firms, family investment companies or stock-market listings, and some have gone private again. Corporate pages tell the founding story, while independent trade press and national newspapers record the deals, the restructurings, the court rulings and the openings abroad, with dates.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each chain: who founded it and where, who owns it now, how it grew and what it says about its coffee and baking. Where a fact rests only on the company’s own word, it is given as the company’s claim. The palette and typeface shown are our own unofficial interpretation, not the brand’s.

One soft colour and a few hundred square feet.

Blank Street’s look is built on colour and format more than on a symbol. City A.M. wrote in October 2025 of the “ubiquity” of its pastel green branding across London, and of shops, drinks and counters that were sleek and simple; two years earlier the same paper had described the chain’s “bright urban decor.” The small footprint, a few hundred square feet in the figures given to both Restaurant Business and City A.M., shapes how the shops look as well as how they work.

Lladó told City A.M. in 2025 that store design and customer experience were part of raising quality as the chain grew. The menu mixes standard espresso drinks with seasonal ones: in autumn 2022 these included a Mike’s Hot Honey Latte and blended pistachio and pumpkin spice lattes, Restaurant Business reported. In 2023 the company told City A.M. it was looking to bring its US loyalty membership to the UK.

Blank Street is backed by the venture investors named above and is based in New York, with the UK as its other market, according to Restaurant Business and The Caterer. Its brand story is short and well documented: a cart in a diner garden in 2020, a first shop in 2021, London in 2022, and a green that has become the chain’s signature on two continents.

For a design guide, Blank Street shows how a young chain can turn one soft colour and a small shop format into a recognisable identity in two countries. Compare Black Sheep Coffee, another London coffee chain that grew quickly in the 2020s, and Starbucks. For this guide we use a soft mint, a deep green and an oat cream with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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