Rabbit's Foot
Uptown New Orleans
Client: Ryan Murphy
Role: Architecture, Interior Design
Scope: Renovation of neighborhood grocery into restaurant.
Status: Complete 2021
Size: 4,500 sq. ft.
Budget: $220,000
Collaborators: Mayer Building Company
Colorful, Caribbean-inspired neighborhood bodega
Rabbit’s Foot is a modern bodega and New Orleans corner store with Caribbean influences and a passion for soul warming coffee and food. It is a coffee shop, place to get local produce, discover your next favorite wine, or grab a quick bite to eat for breakfast or lunch while you’re in-between things.
Playful guise of breaking up a large space on a tight budget
Studio West’s design embraced the playful passion of the reimagined bodega through a flexible layout, vibrant colors and moveable shelving and furnishings. Located at the ground floor of a mixed-use building along a busy residential thoroughfare in New Orleans, the space serves a much-needed third service to the neighborhood. The program was divided into three major zones: a coffee bar with a full-service kitchen at the rear of the space, a grocery market in the middle, and ample seating, both dining and informal couches, at the front of the space by the windows.
Inspired by Cuban bodegas and New Orleans corner stores, the vibrant paint selections were used to delineate the program and break up a deep, dark tenant space, where adding additional windows was not an option. The color blocking included color coding the existing structural and mechanical elements in hot pink and provide an unexpected atmosphere that draw shoppers and guests to the self-service counter in the back of the space. Studio West designed simple pegboard millwork to allow for flexible display of groceries and market products. The colorful paint scheme and humble pegboard shelving were ways the project was able to be construction on a tight budget of $44 a sq. ft.
