Before & After: How We Built a Pop-Up Store in 3 Days

A number of months ago, the Union Square Starbucks was located at the corner of Broadway and 17th Street, in a corner space with no fewer than 12 windows and a constant stream of passersby heading to and from the nearby subways. When Starbucks moved out this fall, they ripped up everything inside the original location—it looked like a tornado had blown through.

Fast forward to last Monday, November 30th, when Food52 started a short-term lease on the space with high hopes of opening our annual Holiday Market to visitors just 3 short days later. Spoiler alert? We did it. But to say that we took this space from zero (construction zone) to 60 (fully fledged retail embodiment of our online Shop) in no time doesn't quite paint a full picture. A team of pop-up consultants, most of our employees, and a bit of hired muscle spent the better part of those all-too-short days on-site—and here are the before and after shots to prove it:

The Movie Theater:

The Shelving:

The Living Room:

The Dining Room:

The Window Decals:

The Giant Pegboard Wall:

The Pantry:

Everything Else:

What else went into making the pop-up a winter wonderland? Foremost, the vision of a planning team that included our art director Alexis Anthony, our Shop team's Jojo Feld and Kristina Wasserman, a marketing dream team (Jackie Stauffer, Haley Sonneland, Kate Kudish, and Francesca Andreani), and of course Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, who had the layout, products, and decorations planned before we even set foot in the space on Monday. Second? Every helping hand in the company, who arrived with holiday cheer to spare, ready to perform riveting tasks like organizing inventory, printing and stickering barcodes, decorating Christmas trees, and arranging odds and ends on every surface. Here's a look:

And here's how we're storing backup inventory:

To top it off, our employees are also staffing the market! Come visit such excellent personal shoppers as Jovan Stojanovich and Leslie Stephens:

Though some people always work harder than others: