Raising the bar: a chocolate shop like no other

The designer confesses to treating himself to a Mars bar, “not every day, but definitely weekly”, as an afternoon pick-me-up. It’s a habit that started early: growing up, he loved “newsagent chocolate bars”, and recalls being “starved” of them when his family moved to Paris for a few years.

Since then, his tastes have matured to include an appreciation for the Tip Tap, a handmade bar with peanut butter biscuit and caramel by the chocolatier Barnaby. He’s had plenty of opportunities to indulge. Since its founder, Barney Goff, launched Barnaby in 2024, Morris has advised on all aspects of the branding and designed three of the brand’s four central London stores, including the most recent opening, on Mount Street in Mayfair.

Whereas his shops in Covent Garden and the City drew on Edwardian Arts and Crafts references, in Mayfair Morris has gone “back to the drawing board”, landing on a modernist-inspired scheme. In part, this responds to a new Barnaby offering: customisable chocolate bars, handmade and boxed in front of customers. “It can be a messy process, so we raised the counters to hide some of it,” Morris says, though a sleek glass front still provides a view of each bar receiving a slow dredge through molten chocolate.

The change in direction has also emerged from Morris’s research-led approach. Before founding his practice, Morrisstudio, he was a design editor and writer, and an “element of journalism” still underpins his work. Learning that Mount Street was once a hotbed of specialist retail – tailors, tobacconists, perfumers – he thought back to his own experiences of such spaces, recalling a shoe shop in particular. “It had 1970s wood panelling, stainless steel trim, fitted carpet and a dropped, lit ceiling,” he says. “It was very office-like.”

Those details have resurfaced here, though the effect is more mid-century Italian espresso bar than 70s workspace. Dark walnut panelling is framed by stainless steel skirting and counter trims. Olive-green carpet gives a 1970s flex, which is amplified by a five-metre-long light box that casts a disco-era glow overhead.

Morris’s research also led him to Chinese takeaway menus from the 1990s as inspiration for the pick-and-mix paper menu, designed by Lindsay Lewis. The main menu, meanwhile, takes its cue from 1940s New York cafeteria signage. And Arts and Crafts hasn’t been completely forgotten: a series of marquetry artworks depicting rural life hang on the back wall, their varying tones harmonising with the dark walnut.

Somehow, all this era-hopping sits together, perhaps precisely because Morris isn’t worried about being too much of a magpie. “In the research stage, you can fire off in all directions and put them back together again in a space that hopefully makes sense as one whole,” he says. It also helps that the brand’s nostalgic visual identity, created by Irving & Co, and inspired by Bournville, the Arts and Crafts garden village suburb in Birmingham created for the workers of Cadbury, frames the time-travelling within a familiar context.

It’s all a long, long way from what might spring to mind at the thought of a “central-London confectionery shop”, and, unsurprisingly, this is a conscious decision. When he surveyed the landscape as part of the exploration stage for the design of the first shop, Morris says, the reigning design aesthetic was “all very pink and marble, with plastic flower things around the front door”. With chocolate bars being a more subdued offering than, say, an oversized croissant or bubble waffle, the design is pitched accordingly. “It’s really aimed at millennials and over, who might remember a Marathon bar in the 80s,” says Morris.

Step inside, and staff greet you wearing handstitched uniforms by the London-based design firm Ventura Foreman. Order a chocolate bar and a coffee, and you can enjoy them while sitting on an Arne Jacobsen stool upholstered in honey-coloured leather. How does it compare with the other Barnaby shops? “The nice thing about Mount Street is that it’s not got such high footfall, so the experience can be a bit slower, more bespoke. This one is a bit more grownup,” Morris says. Much like his own tastes, then.