Great interiors do more than look good – they shape how we move, feel and remember a place.
With more than 500 stores around the world, Joe & The Juice has built a global brand where design plays a central role in creating a consistent guest experience. Every material, color and furniture choice is carefully considered to balance operational efficiency with a strong sense of identity, ensuring each store feels unmistakably “Joe” while responding to its local context.
We spoke with Joe & The Juice’s Store Design Lead, Theresa Munkholm, about designing with intention, creating spaces that feel authentic, and why choosing furniture that is built to last is essential when shaping experiences at a global scale.
What’s important to you in an interior design process at Joe & The Juice?
We’re all about designing with intention. Not just filling a room with capacity, it’s about taking control of how our guests experience and remember the brand. Every decision, from the bar material to the chair height, has to serve a purpose. Our new store concept is called “The Juicers’ Home” for a reason: it should feel like a home that Juicers are proud to maintain and welcome guests into. That means operational logic and aesthetics have to work completely together from day one. We’re growing at a very high pace, so ensuring the Brand DNA lives in every store we open around the world is a massive focus. And at the same time, keeping rollout complexity low and working with strong, reliable suppliers, that’s what makes it all work at scale.
What does a “typical” creative process look like?
We always start with the creative brief for our external concept designers. What’s the context? What’s the strategic rationale for adding this location to the JTJ pipeline? What area are we in, and how does the brand fit into the local environment? We don’t just roll out the same store everywhere without reflecting on who the guests are or how we land in a neighborhood. We work a lot in Travel Nodes, Retail & Tourism Hubs, and Daily Living Areas, and that area tag determines everything: mood, seating height, customer flow, music, even which color scheme we pull from. From there we work inward toward the bar, which is center stage in all our stores. That’s the scene the Juicers perform on, and it has to feel bold and confident. Materials, colors, furniture, everything starts from the tiles behind the bar.
Describe your design philosophy
“Design through clear intentions.” We celebrate the perfect imperfections at Joe. Raw concrete, exposed brick, industrial ceilings, those aren’t flaws, that’s what brings the character. Joe is rowdy, and the design needs to reflect that. We actively look for existing raw elements in a space and build around them rather than covering them up. That’s a deliberate choice to keep the soul of the building alive inside the store. But it goes beyond materials, the character of Joe lives in every detail of the design. The quotes on the walls, the objects on the shelves, the photography that tells the juicers stories. That rawness and personality are never smoothed away for convenience. We’re building something that should feel real, a bit rough around the edges, like you’re stepping into our home.
How do you connect design to Joe & The Juice’s needs?
The brand is built on energy, authenticity, and making everyone feel like a rockstar. Design has to deliver that physically, not just visually. It has to feel right to stand in the room, move through it, sit in it. But it also has to be operationally bulletproof. We’re making a lot of products, we have a lot of people moving in and out, and our stores need to handle that without losing any of the feeling. Scaling that storytelling from one store to now over 520 locations, keeping it consistent, keeping it Joe, that’s the real challenge. We work with three store tiers: Roll-out, Flagship, and Signature. The core is always the same, the expression varies.
What excites you most about working as Store Design Lead?
That we’re actually shaping culture. Joe isn’t a brand that chases trends, we set them. Every new store is a chance to deliver something no other F&B player is doing, with a real creative mandate to push the brand forward while staying true to who we are. That tension between evolution and authenticity is what keeps it interesting. But what I connect with most deeply is the idea that we can make someone’s week, day, or month better just through the experience of being in one of our stores. That we can nudge someone to feel a certain way, or leave with a smile, without them even knowing that a design decision, the flow, the seating, the light, quietly pushed them in that direction.
What do you look for when selecting furniture?
High quality and good partners. Almost all of our furniture partners are Scandinavian, because they share our love for simple, high-quality design. It’s not just about style; it’s a statement about quality and intention. Our furniture has to survive a very tough, high-traffic environment. There’s a big difference between a chair that fills a seat and a chair that adds to the story of the room. Our guests are paying a premium price point, and they should feel that premium the moment they sit down. And it has to work across all three store tiers, from a Roll-out in a busy transit hub to a Flagship in a prime city location. That versatility is non-negotiable.
Can you tell us more about the Joe & The Juice project at Copenhagen Airport? Why was TAKT the right match?
CPH Airport is basically the Travel Node blueprint, high capacity, people in transit, efficiency is everything. But that doesn’t mean we compromise on experience. If anything, high-pressure environments are where the brand has to work even harder, because first impressions are everything for someone discovering Joe for the first time. It’s also a place where the storytelling has to land fast, people aren’t lingering, so every detail counts. TAKT’s Forma chair and Soft Lounge chair are exactly that intersection of function and form that makes sense when people sit for shorter periods but still need to feel Joe’s energy.
What made you want to work with TAKT?
High quality and values. TAKT designs with intention, fewer, better things. We’re not interested in furniture that shouts or tries too hard. We want furniture that sits right, looks honest, and ages well. TAKT gets that thing about simplicity that isn’t boring, where restraint becomes a form of confidence. Their pieces also translate beautifully across our different color schemes and store tiers, which matters a lot when you’re rolling out globally but still want every store to feel considered. And practically, being able to swap out spare parts without replacing the entire piece is huge for us. We’re very conscious of the waste our business generates, and we always strive to use furniture for as many years as possible, reusing and maintaining wherever we can. TAKT makes that easy.
Why is interior design a central part of a space?
Because spaces shape how we feel and the energy we receive, and people feel it, even if they don’t think about it. Sounds, light, materials, seamless customer flow, that’s the entire frame around the experience, and it’s working on you whether you notice it or not. At Joe, we want you to feel the vibe from the moment you walk in until the moment you leave. The design sets that stage. It’s the quotes on the wall, the objects on the shelf, the photograph you stop and look at for a second and wonder who that crazy person might be. Those details are what make a space feel alive. Hopefully it’s what brings a guest back, not just for the juice, but for how the place makes them feel.
Our Juicers are such a central part of what we do, and great design gives them the best possible starting point to deliver a premium guest experience.