River Cottage Kitchen & Deli

We were delighted to have the opportunity to work with River Cottage and Levy Restaurants UK to add another restaurant and deli to the already award winning River Cottage portfolio. The latest development has a stunning hill top location overlooking the Dunstable country side within ZSL Whipsnade Zoo grounds. Benchmark carefully reflected the River cottage ethos, being environmentally conscious and ensuring maximum sustainability throughout every part of the buildings transformation and design process. Re-using timber from the demolition works as counter cladding, using recycled glass counter tops and upcycling roll top desks for waiter stations are just a few examples of how our designers brought the spirit of up-cycling and recycling to the project. The stand-alone building provides two options for visitors, a deli and a restaurant with external seating. The internal space is designed to be flexible for these offers, by using mobile screen dividers, allowing each area to be adapted to suit the numbers of covers required for the time of year. The building itself started off as a bus shelter and over time extra walls and windows were added to create a picnic shelter. This did create some design challenges. In making every inch on the space to be used as efficiently and functional as possible, within an unconventional shaped building. We always love a challenge!