How Canada’s Best Store Fixtures helped transform this QSR’s newest store design into a scalable store remodel program.

Walk into one of COBS Bread‘s newly redesigned bakeries, and you’ll notice something surprising.

The store feels bigger. The lighting is brighter. The displays are more inviting, allowing customers to quickly grab their favourite loaf or take their time exploring everything the bakery has to offer.

But the footprint itself? It hasn’t changed.

That’s the thinking behind COBS Bread’s new bakery concept, developed in partnership with design firm SLD.

Rather than simply refreshing the brand’s appearance, the goal was to rethink the entire shopping experience:

• A new grab-and-go display gives returning customers a faster way to shop.
• A new abundance tower encourages others to browse and discover freshly baked products.

Working alongside COBS Bread and SLD, Canada’s Best Store Fixtures helped translate the new design into functional, durable and buildable bakery environments.

From engineering and full-scale prototyping to material sourcing, manufacturing and installation, every detail needed to support COBS Bread’s business goals while also meeting the practical demands of a growing QSR franchise network.

The Business Results

The new bakery format is delivering encouraging results. COBS Bread reports improved like-for-like sales and significantly higher grab-and-go product sales in its pilot locations, demonstrating how a more intuitive shopping experience can support the business.

Turning Renderings Into Reality

Working with SLD and COBS Bread, CBSF developed shop drawings, engineered custom millwork and built full-scale prototypes. The teams then tested and refined the fixtures before production, helping ensure the finished bakery stayed true to the original design intent while meeting the business’s operational needs.

Renovations Reduced From Two Weeks to Five Days

By coordinating design, manufacturing, contractors and installation around a tightly managed schedule, COBS Bread and its project partners reduced front-of-house renovation closures from more than two weeks to five days, at a lower cost than previous renovations.

Delivering On Time and On Budget

For a national franchise network, every store opening and renovation involves multiple vendors, trades and deadlines. CBSF’s manufacturing and delivery schedules were critical to keeping the project moving, helping COBS Bread deliver the featured bakery on time and within budget.

The Store Feels Bigger

The new layout creates two distinct shopping experiences: a fast grab-and-go path for customers who know what they want, and a more relaxed browsing experience centred around the abundance tower. Combined with brighter lighting and a lighter material palette, the redesign makes the bakery feel more open without expanding its footprint.

Why CBSF?

From Concept to Rollout

A great QSR design isn’t judged by how good it looks on opening day.

It’s judged by how well it works for customers, how efficiently it can be built, and whether it can be repeated across an entire franchise network.

For COBS Bread, Canada’s Best Store Fixtures helped turn SLD’s new bakery concept into a scalable store remodel program, delivering custom millwork that balances design, durability and functionality while supporting faster renovations and lower costs.

If you’re planning a new store concept, prototype, or national rollout, we’d love to help.

Contact our retail fixture design-build team to discuss your next project.

Video Transcription

Buying bread is an experience. COBS Bread is a franchisee-owned business. It started in Australia. In Canada, we have 191 locations. We work with our franchisees to build out the brand. It’s a quality product. It’s passionate people that bring the brand alive.

Our older design was still pretty fresh, pretty decent-looking, but we wanted customers in and out and did not feel that they needed to rush out of there before getting what they wanted.

We changed paint colours, lighting, millwork, that whole shopping experience for the customer.

CBSF made our first-ever abundance tower, which is a tall display highlighting all our bakery items. And they also were instrumental in developing our new grab-and-go, where we have eight linear feet to showcase product that’s ready to go for our customers.

You can see how much brighter the space is and how much more inviting it is and how much more modern. I feel like it makes the brand feel fresher and almost new.

The number of products we’re selling from the grab-and-go has exponentially increased in our pilot locations.

And the abundance tower is specifically made for the customers that don’t know what they want, and they can take a look at and see all the products there. It kind of calls you over.

I wanted a partner that I knew did quality product, and that’s why I chose them.

They provided expertise in terms of manufacturing, engineering, shop drawings, value engineering, procurement, quality assurance.

They made prototypes for us that we could go to their shop, take a look at, and make small changes so that the final design suited the needs of the bakery.

After testing it for a while, they’re able to kind of help us create little add-ons and just keep building with them. That takes a lot of work and a lot of patience because, obviously, we’re constantly tweaking things.

CBSF came up, “Hey, this particular item actually comes from the U.S., in Texas. We need to either find an alternate product,” which wasn’t viable because everyone loved the product. So we partnered together and said, “Hey, we need to order enough of this to have a pipeline of items ready, so we don’t have any downtime.”

So they were able to strategically source those items for us.

I’ve seen drawings and renderings of the new design, but it was different walking in. It was exciting for me to actually see it and for it to be my store.

The value engineering that we got back from CBSF was fantastic because everyone was involved in it.

It’s very hard when you do a rendering and the first output is like the rendering. I’ve been doing this for a long time. You can tell by the colour of my beard. It’s very rare that that happens.

When you get that from a rendering to output, that to me is the definition of success.

CBSF is valuable for us because we have a dedicated team. They deliver on their promises. They make an excellent product. We have the right contacts in place, and they understand our business and our business needs.

I would choose to work with CBSF again just because they know what we need in terms of, like, the function within our bakeries.

And we did come in on budget and on time, which was great.

If I’m able to sell this at a number that works well for the franchisees, they’re going to be lined up knocking on my door to say, “Robbie, when can I get mine done?”

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