Farmer’s Fridge Startup Grows into Innovative, Budget-Friendly Office

In a century-old industrial building in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood, a growing food manufacturing company is planting its roots.

Farmer’s Fridge provides and stocks vending machines with fresh, healthy and locally sourced salads and sandwiches in offices, hospitals, airports and other locations across Chicago, New York and New Jersey. The brand’s “farm-to-city” mission to connect rural farms and their products with urban residents drove the design of its new 14,000-square-foot office space, which blends elements of a rustic farmhouse with gritty textures of the city, all in a historic 1930s building with industrial manufacturing roots.

After five years in business, the company was growing rapidly and needed a bigger workspace but didn’t want to spend too much of its venture capital funding on designing a new office. Farmer’s Fridge commissioned local Chicago design firm, Kuchar, to lead the project and create an office that reflected its brand, accommodated its changing space needs and fit its budget.

Intent on creating an aesthetic that straddled the line between cool and professional without breaking the bank, studio owner/creative director Sarah Kuchar and her team utilized creative paint applications, unique interior design materials and Ikea fixtures.

The 100-year-old former industrial space at 2000 W Fulton St in Chicago’s West Town, where Farmer’s Fridge now occupies two floors, already had “great bones” Kuchar said, with warm brick walls that the designers left mostly intact or worked into the design.

“[The Farmer’s Fridge team] really loved the character of the building and wanted to appreciate it, but just wanted it to be a bit more cleaned up,” said Kuchar. “When you go into these old buildings, there are so many signs of previous life, and you can redo them, or you can keep those elements as they are. There are many instances in this project where we kept things intact and maybe just painted over them, so it becomes part of the charm and just blends in a little more.”

Kuchar notes that the adaptive reuse element of the project required very little demolition work, and new construction was mostly limited to fixing unsafe structural elements, like some flooring and supports, or outdated features, such as inefficient windows. But otherwise, the design team embraced the existing aesthetic of the space and used some of the original features as design elements.

“For example, there is an old fire door which we left in place and painted the company’s green brand color. We really tried to honor the building while giving it new life,” Kuchar explains.

On the top floor where the main workspaces and desks are located, the design team wanted the expansive space with its looming 30-foot ceilings to feel comfortable and homey.

“We added a warm paint tone on the top half of the wall, which was inspired by the wood-framed pitched ceilings you might see in a residential farmhouse,” said Kuchar.

Filling the high ceiling is a custom chandelier piece, 8 feet in diameter, which serves as the focal point of the workspace.

“With a big space like this, you can add some really great pieces, but they are all often going to cost a lot of money,” Kuchar said. “So, we had to think, what can we create that won’t be really expensive?”

The result was a DIY chandelier that the team made from 25 individual Ikea light pendants.

Kuchar noted that the furniture is also all sourced from retail brands to save on cost, and the team chose colors that aligned with the brand, as well as different rug patterns and other material textures to make the space feel more “vintage and lived in.”

The two kitchens are made with customizable Ikea cabinet fronts, and like the chandelier, most of the space’s light fixtures and pendants are sourced from Ikea. For the bathrooms and kitchen backsplashes, standard hex tiles and grout were installed in a variety of colors to create interesting and unique patterns.

Some of the office’s kitchens and conference rooms feature custom stainless-steel countertops or tables, a nod to the brand’s roots.

“The company started making salads on those typical restaurant, stainless-steel prep tables, and [incorportating those into the office] represents where the brand began,” said Kuchar. “It’s a story for anyone that comes in, whether they’re a client, interviewee or a new hire, that where they’re meeting now is how and where the company started.”

The firm sourced inexpensive, readily available materials that were easy to install as design elements and were also fitting for its farm-to-urban branding, such as a chain-link fence for its staircase and corrugated metal wall paneling that it paired with neon graphics in the entryway.

“Some of these things are cost-saving measures, but they also worked to the concept, like the full-height chain-link fence enclosure, painted in the Farmer’s Fridge green brand color, around the stairs representing the urban element, for example,” said Kuchar.

Kuchar, who previously worked at a top architecture firm before starting her own design studio, said the project’s budget constraints allowed the team to come up with more creative, interesting solutions for the space.

“When you work on large-budget projects where you have access to any and all beautiful finishes and details, you can make a perfect design. But, for me, it’s really interesting to work with startup clients where that’s not an option, and you have to come up with the creative solutions, like the chain-link stair and the Ikea chandelier, and not just do what you always do in an office design,” she explains. “You have to stop and rethink things in a different way, and we really stretched ourselves to figure out some of these different and unique design elements. It shows that being on a budget doesn’t mean your space has to look cheap.”

The workspace is meant to grow with the company as it adds employees, an important design tenet for a rapidly expanding startup. The central work area on the top floor has power outlets wired in a modular system throughout the floor, allowing the team to add or reconfigure desks as spacing needs change. The conference rooms are also outfitted with a modular table system from Ikea that can be put together or broken down to accommodate different meeting or staff sizes.

“Even a wall could be taken down to create a bigger conference room with a bigger table made from the pieces they already have,” said Kuchar. “Nothing is really meant to be completely permanent.”

An open office floor plan is balanced by conference rooms and lounges on both floors where employees can get away from the main space for individual work or meetings.

The top floor makes use of its high ceilings with a built-out mezzanine with conference rooms, from small breakout spaces to a large boardroom, and windows that overlook the workspace below. Underneath the mezzanine are smaller phone booth-style spaces.

The lower-level floor is where employees enter the office through a café-style lounge with a kitchen, tables and lots of comfortable furniture for socializing or working. The design layout here was strategic, said Kuchar.

“Company culture is very important to Farmer’s Fridge owner [Luke Saunders]. He wanted people to walk through the entry with the company’s logo and into this lounge space,” she explains. “He felt like that space represented their culture, and he wanted employees to mix together, have chances for collaboration and run into each other. So, we designed it in a way where that’s easy for them to do. Everything starts there in that lounge space.”

Beyond interaction, employees use the lounge space for meetings or individual work, and Kuchar describes it as a “third place” away from your desk, like working in a coffee shop. This floor also features more formal meeting spaces, as well as the food prep test kitchen, which has picnic tables and café-style seating for demonstrations.

“As a small business ourselves, we appreciate the creative spirit and relish finding affordable, adaptable solutions,” said Kuchar.