JOIN USStep off the office elevator and you’re immediately hit with the smell: a cooking aroma, something warm and inviting (corn chowder? bread?) wafting from a spacious, open kitchen with a wall of Waterworks cabinets. The lights are set to rainy-Saturday-at-home. Stocked metal bar carts line the back of a plush sofa in a lounge area. One woman conducts a work call inside the “book nook,” a free-standing four-walled room built within the space, with library shelves and a chocolate brown swivel chair that came not from Staples but Chairish.com, a vintage furniture site.
Indeed, the Chelsea headquarters of Food52, the online cooking community and e-commerce site, look less like an office than a cosy loft apartment. Which is the point. The workspace was designed by Brad Sherman, a Manhattan-based commercial designer who has developed a trademark style that blurs the line between home and office.
Brad installs soft lighting, vintage midcentury furniture and fiddle-leaf fig trees. Or, as he did with the downtown office and showroom of Casper, the online mattress seller, he carves out discrete rooms, staging them with artwork and used books from the Strand to create the
impression that someone lives there. If your workplace is as comfortable and welcoming as your home, the thinking goes, you never have to leave. “A lot of startups can’t afford the best young talent,” Brad said. “So how do they attract it? With cool spaces.”
Brad, 30, has created cool homey spaces for several of the city’s tech startups, including Sakara Life, an organic-meal delivery service; Jack Erwin, a direct-to-consumer men’s shoe retailer; and Mobile Commons, a text-messaging platform for nonprofits to connect with donors.
Clients who have hired Brad describe him as a budget-stretching magician, able to transform Ikea sawhorses and plywood slabs into chic workstations, or fashion an arty chandelier from exposed mattress springs and string lights. “We needed it to look presentable because we had customers coming in,” said Philip Krim, the chief executive of Casper, referring to the apartment workspace he hired Brad to design. “Brad was able to get the job done in a scrappy way that allows us to live on a startup budget but have an office we’re very proud of.”
A designer for all
Ariel Nelson, a co-founder of Jack Erwin, turned to Brad after his friend Philip hailed the designer. The company had a nothing budget of “20 grand, all in,” he said, for a 3,500-square-foot loft in SoHo. Brad took control of the build-out, allowing Ariel to focus on building his company. “I was like, ‘If you have a creative idea and it saves me money, go for it,’” Ariel said. “It was mostly all him.”
The office-as-home concept has been perfected with Brad’s latest finished project, Food52. Giving a tour of the space one recent afternoon, Brad – handsome, floppy-haired, Midwestern friendly pointed out the chrome and rattan rocker he found at Amsterdam Modern, a
vintage store in Los Angeles, and paired with an Ikea coffee table. “It’s about the mix,” he said. “I spent money where I thought it would improve the sophistication.”
Merrill Stubbs, a co-founder of Food52, said she wanted a space that “evokes hunger but is also soothing, super-functional as an office and also feels like a home.” Because the staff members use their office for photo shoots, the test kitchen also had to feel warm and lived-in, in keeping with the brand’s focus on home cooks. It was a high bar that Brad
exceeded. “Everyone comments about how things are so pulled together and every inch is thought out,” Merrill said.
Isn’t Merrill concerned her employees will feel too much at home? “We’re online and available all the time,” she said. “Giving people a place to relax or feel comfortable at the office is much needed for recharging.”
Working with startups presents unique challenges, Brad said, because often the clients lack both funds and office renovation experience, but still have high expectations. And yet Brad has delivered under those demands, again and again, becoming, as Merrill put it, “the go-to
office designer for tech startups looking to make a statement.”
Being the guy who can over-deliver on the cheap isn’t the most lucrative path for a designer. But as Brad’s firm is growing and maturing, so are his clients. He’s designing a new, much larger office for Casper, which has already outgrown its downtown space and turned to Brad
because, as Philip said, “Brad knows our aesthetic and we know we’ll get something really great.”
Brad persuaded Philip and his partners to lease a space in a building along Broadway, north of Union Square. The office, currently occupied by a brokerage firm, is run-down and man cave-ish. But as Brad explained on a recent visit, he sees potential in the expansive northern and southern views, the skylight and the new HVAC system and other cost-saving
elements already present. His eyes lit up, appraising the potential. “First thing I look at is, what can I reuse?” Brad said, adding what may as well be his sales pitch. “We can accomplish a lot more for a lot less.”