LEGO wanted a novel dining experience for families for their new LEGO House. Something unique and high tech, that embodied the joy of building, reflected their brand values of Creativity, Fun and Learning Through Play, and expanded upon their mission: to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow.

We were tasked to create a 45-minute family dining restaurant that only LEGO could have done, one that was hard, if not impossible, to copy.

Build your meal with LEGO bricks and watch how the animated LEGO characters cook the food in realtime.

Who said food ordering in a self-service restaurant must be boring and conventional?

The Mini Chef restaurant is an informal mid-range option, between a quick snack in the Briccaccino Cafe and Le Gourmet fancy dining. The guest journey was structured as a 45-60 minute session centered around the two magic moments of building plus scanning your meal and getting it served from the LEGO robots. These moments were designed to be fun and easily understood on children's terms, as well as memorable and shareable.

The LEGO House is a round-the-year destination for families primarily from northern Europe and with kids in the 6-10 age range, and fans from all over the world.

The overarching storytelling and key decisions for UX, design and tech were set during a 4-month pre-study, after which followed 1,5 years of production of hardware, tech, content, branding, and staff interface.

The experience was storyboarded and acted out iteratively between staff, guests and "robots", with continously improved prototypes, from the very first weeks.

Three large scale user tests were conducted at the LEGO World Fair, in a Copenhagen restaurant, and with the full solution mounted in Göteborg, before installation and trimming-in on site in Billund.

The restaurant has a capacity of 150 seats, plus an additional 100 outside during summer, and a throughput of some 800 guests per day, seven days a week on high season.

A TripAdvisor sharing prompt and entrance video were added after the first 6 months, along with adjustment to reporting, menu and staffing.

Staff storytelling continues to evolve to this day.

1st year of operations

1.6M+

fan video views

1.116

Articles*

*House Grand Opening total coverage – many mention the MINI CHEF

4,45/5

avg. guest rating

(85.605?guests)