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Chai Spot Additions

Working at a tea shop during the pandemic gave me the opportunity to practice my design skills in a variety of ways. Whether it be our needs, the customer's needs, or those of the environment, I tried to find creative solutions anywhere I could.

laminated paper menus, a recycling station, a 3D printed bottle tagging system, and stickers, all created to reduce waste, and improve customer satisfaction.

The Menu -  Originally only located on the back wall of the kitchen as seen above, it is difficult to see and many guests needed to lean over our hot pots of cooking tea to read it.

With several physical menus, multiple guests can browse the menu anywhere they'd like, find answers to the most common questions, see what the teas look like, and they are easily sanitized. Information on the back tells the story of the Chai Spot's mission.

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Recycling Station -  Pre-pandemic, chai was served in cute glass cups, but we switched to to-go cups only as a precaution. This produced a tremendous amount of waste, instead of one bag of trash a day, we'd take out three bags each day at least. This was wasteful and time consuming, plus it was all recyclable plastic going to the landfill.

Sedona recycling facilities only accept #1, #2, and #5 plastics and most guests were visiting from out of town, so I set up a system for recycling. This included a closed bucket with a funnel for excess liquids, a bin to collect recyclables, a trash and a sign to help guests know the difference.

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3D Printed bottle tagging system -  Cold tea was made in large batches and stored in cleaned out milk jugs in the fridge for up to a week. Originally, colored stickers were used to label each tea and the date it was made was written on this paper sticker. Once the bottle was empty, it would be washed where the sticker would fall off and end up in the sink, only used once. Some teas were more popular than others, so we ended up with pages of stickers that never got used.

To avoid this waste, the cost of packs of stickers and clogged drains, I designed and 3D printed collars and tags to label the bottles. Colored resin helped distinguish the teas at a glance and provided a smooth surface where the date could be written with a dry-erase marker and wiped clean after use.

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Stickers -  We were asked many times if we sold stickers, and with business being a bit slower during the pandemic, it seemed like an easy way to satisfy our guests' requests and help make up for the lost business.

I had initially design the orange color scheme. When those proved to be profitable, I added the other two color schemes and priced the stickers lower than any others in town while still making a profit.

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