Bringing Café One to life, online and in person.

Café One | Founder’s experience | 21 months

This case study covers Cold Open Lab founder Adesekonge-Ire Aremu’s contribution within the Café One team during her employment there.

Café One’s main social media page grew from roughly 5,000 followers to 13,000 during Ire’s 21-month tenure. Alongside that growth, the brand developed a more playful voice, campaigns that invited participation and newsletters that prompted replies.

A coffee and coworking brand needed to show its appeal

When Konge joined, the page mainly carried event flyers and announcements. Those posts explained what was happening, but gave prospective guests little sense of the spaces, the coffee or the experience of spending time there.

To connect with a younger audience, Café One’s content needed to feel sociable and inviting.

In her first meeting with the General Manager, Konge asked which businesses Café One benchmarked. She researched brands including WeWork and Starbucks, then broadened her references to Wendy’s, McDonald’s and Duolingo. She drew on how they presented spaces, expressed personality and made entertainment part of their content.

The strategic decision: Give prospective guests reasons to follow, share and picture themselves at Café One between event announcements.

Coffee became something to learn about and laugh about

Konge introduced coffee education through videos and graphics, explaining different coffee options for an audience that included guests more familiar with instant coffee. Memes, humorous posts and an unnamed coffee-cup mascot gave the brand a more recognisable personality.

Trend-led skits added another way into the brand. The content could be entertaining in its own right while keeping Café One in the conversation.

Space videos and food photography made more of the physical experience visible. Konge also developed the Coffee by Café One page as a dedicated home for food and coffee imagery, giving prospective guests more to discover before visiting.

Campaigns gave guests something to take part in

For Valentine’s, “Everything Love Should Be” expanded beyond a dinner promotion into a wider campaign about kindness, generosity and expression. Hubs interpreted the theme through activities including celebrations, charitable giving and boards where guests could leave messages. Some hubs adapted the boards for messages to ex-partners, which Ire reports attracted substantial sharing online.

For Easter 2025, Konge wrote “One seed fell, many were raised.” She connected the idea of sacrifice and new life to a coffee bean, with designer Patrick Ben-Okafor creating the visual. Lade Falobi placed Café One first in her Marketing For Geeks Easter-ad review and rated the creative 10/10.

The same thinking carried into email and articles

Emails moved from lists of upcoming events towards stories explaining what an event offered and why a subscriber might want to attend. Konge reports that subscribers began replying to the newsletters.

Blog and LinkedIn content explored coffee education, coworking, networking and the benefits of working outside the home. These topics gave readers something relevant to their own lives while introducing reasons to consider Café One.

For brands reviewing their content: Show what customers can experience, explain what they need to understand and give them something worth sharing.

What changed

By the end of the 21-month period, the main page had reached 13,000 followers from a starting point of roughly 5,000. The work also produced reported newsletter replies, shared campaign content and independently documented recognition for the Easter creative.

This experience informs the content strategy, copywriting and campaign work Konge brings to Cold Open Lab today.

Build content that gives your audience more reasons to pay attention. Book a discovery call with Cold Open Lab.