Mainstay Provisions SLU

Mainstay Provisions is a neighborhood market and café located in South Lake Union, designed to meet the busy lifestyles of working locals and downtown residents. They focus on high-quality pastries, deli-sandwiches, and a wide array of prepared mainstays for the home chef: pizza dough, sauces, soups – ready to turn into a meal in the comfort of home. Heliotrope was tasked with outfitting an unfinished commercial space into a warm and inviting environment to showcase the products on display and the preparation behind the counter. 

White tile behind the counter draws attention to the movements of barista and patron, wordlessly showing newcomers where to queue, while colorful furnishings encourage interaction: the pastry case, coffee counter, and condiment station are places of pilgrimage, and the posts and benches that punctuate the floor welcome a casual lean or a momentary rest. Paneled walls, polished concrete, and painted steel frame the experience in a visual language familiar to Seattle’s public infrastructure: her harbor, train stations, and markets. While durable, the palette also reflects a spiritual ambition to help the client’s customers bring the wider world home, and capture the magic of these social places in an intimate setting: a ship-in-a-bottle. 

On closest inspection, the materials reveal a delicate, domestic scale. The white walls are soft fields of round penny-tile, the birchwood panels are carefully waxed and assembled, and the casework is topped by a sheet of satin stainless steel - unexpected refinement that serves to blur the line between practical and delightful… or the corner store and the home kitchen. As the menu makes a point to elevate simple ingredients, the design had an obligation to do the same: each element thoughtfully considered, carefully assembled.​​