(CASE STUDY)
Bonsai
Client
Bonsai
Year
since 2024
Sector
Hospitality
Services
Menu design / Art direction / Social media / Print & outdoor
Bonsai is an Asian restaurant that quickly became a lovebrand and grew from one location in 2018 to three cities by the end of 2025. Each location serves a different clientele: business lunches and travelers in Ružomberok, young adults in Liptovský Mikuláš and families on vacation in the High Tatras. Despite the different audiences, Bonsai's guests come to experience authentic Vietnamese meals made with high-quality ingredients in every location.
A single menu brief grew into an identity that scales with every new location. We built the menu system, the social media, the campaigns and the opening identities, and keep them coherent across three different audiences.
Our challenge was to turn one restaurant's brand into a working system that holds across three cities, each with its own audience, without ever stopping being recognizably Bonsai.
Client
Bonsai is an Asian restaurant that brings the taste of authentic Vietnamese cuisine and modern Asian dishes to cities across Central Slovakia. It opened its first restaurant in 2018 in Liptovský Mikuláš, expanded to Ružomberok in 2024, and opened its third location in the High Tatras in December 2025.
Bonsai serves locals and tourists from around the world alike, ranking among the best restaurants in Slovakia: in 2026 it earned two forks from Falstaff and a toque from Gault & Millau.
Challenge
Our first challenge was to create a menu for the new Ružomberok location, the company's most ambitious step yet. The more luxurious space called for an expression that was not the standard in the Asian restaurant category, where a menu in the region typically meant crowded pages and catalog food photography.
The original Bonsai brand was created for the first restaurant's opening in 2018 and the expansion had outgrown it: there were no rules to keep the identity coherent across three cities with three different audiences. Bonsai wanted more than new locations. It wanted to elevate the whole brand and create a system for the future. As the restaurant grows, we take on more challenges, from creating a new identity for the latest location to running the restaurant's social media.
Menu system
Bilingual Slovak / English menus for all three locations, in use in Ružomberok since April 2024 with ongoing iterations.
Social media
We run art direction and management of Instagram and Facebook for Bonsai Liptovský Mikuláš: content strategy and creation, analytics and paid ads.
Campaigns and outdoor
Event posters, seasonal graphics, a billboard campaign.
Opening identity, High Tatras
Menu, window graphics and launch visuals for the third location's opening (December 2025).
Sub-brand Bonsai space
Logo system and space signage.
The collaboration has run continuously since April 2024, with social media management since September 2025.
THE MENU AS AN EDITORIAL
The menu is the first thing a guest holds, so we designed it as an editorial publication, not a price list. The names of authentic Vietnamese meals often carry little information for the customer, so we led with a visual-first approach and created beautiful photography of every dish. We designed the menu with our UX designer hat on: instead of filling the page with text, we used icons, intuitive navigation and expressive typography to help the guest decide what they want for dinner, while holding a beautifully designed product. That expression became the red thread of the brand: the exact visual language that now carries Bonsai through every environment, from the page to the glass walls.
ONE BRAND, THREE AUDIENCES
Each location caters to its own audience: Ružomberok has a more luxurious feel, Liptovský Mikuláš is youthful, and the Tatras location is a family restaurant. We designed rules that let the brand adapt to each audience and stay unmistakably Bonsai at first glance.
ONE EXPERIENCE, ONLINE AND OFFLINE
We carried the visual language from social media into posters, seasonal graphics, the billboard and the storefronts. A guest who meets the brand on Instagram recognizes it on the street and at the table.
RHYTHM OVER ONE-OFF CAMPAIGNS
Social media content runs on a monthly rhythm with quarterly planning and analytics. Data decides what gets made: content featuring employees from the restaurant team earns the highest engagement, while close-up photos of the meals build credibility.
The menu from the first brief, refined through iterations, is still in use more than two years later, and its editorial language has become the brand's standard. Bonsai now operates in three cities and has earned a well-known identity that expands with every new location, including the Bonsai space sub-brand.
In the first two months of social media management, the profile's monthly reach grew from 8,472 to 49,695 accounts (+487%) and interactions rose by 527%. 71.5% of views came from people outside the follower community: the content brings in new guests, not just keeps existing ones.
Your guests notice the brand before they open the door. Let's design what yours looks like.
IN THE WORKS
“The client’s words on the collaboration will live here.”
Viet Dovan / owner, Bonsai
Credits
Petra Fulová (analytics, strategy, photography), Anna Lukáčová (design, strategy), Adriana Lacková and Alexandra Saloňová (social media management).