Kopje is a small coffee shop in Utrecht that serves four drinks. The owners wanted the morning queue to move faster without the place feeling rushed, and the answer turned out to be colour: give every drink one, and let people order with it.

Four drinks, four colours

Sky blue is the oat flat white. Pink is the hibiscus latte, green is matcha and mandarin is the espresso tonic. Hot drinks go out in cups of those four colours, so the barista can read the order from across the counter.

Cold drinks go in clear cups printed in white, and the drink inside shows the colour instead. Regulars soon started ordering by colour alone.

A menu that is a row of dots

The mark is a cup seen from above, a circle inside a ring. Set four of them in a row in the drink colours and you have the menu card, the shop window and the loyalty card. The window says Open from 7:00 above the four dots, and nothing else.

The loyalty card has five dots to stamp, and the sixth drink is free in whichever colour you like.

After the first busy Saturday, the shop’s owner summed up the change:

People say pink, please, and that is the whole order. The queue is as long as ever, it just moves.

Cheap to print in small runs

The identity runs on two weights of one typeface and four flat colours, plus an espresso brown kept for the staff aprons. With no gradients and no photographs, any local supplier can print it in short runs:

• Hot cups in four colours, ordered by the case.

• Clear cold cups printed in white.

• A mandarin cup carrier and a pink pastry bag.

• Napkins in pink, green and blue.

• Sky blue bags for the house beans, and a canvas tote.

Adding a fifth drink would mean adding a fifth colour. So far the owners have taken that as a good reason not to.