By now, you’ve probably heard of, or maybe even stopped by, Savannah’s newest ice cream spot, Doki Doki. Located at 143 Bull Street, the ice creamery is Southern Cross Hospitality’s newest project, offering unique, Japanese-inspired flavors of sweet treats.
What you may not know, is how the design of the space came to be.
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) students collaborated with the restaurant group via SCADpro, a high-performance design consultancy. But the collaboration was far more interesting than your standard weeks of meetings and planning. A team of students from eight different degree programs participated in a 48-hour design challenge to bring the space to life. That’s right, students had just two days to come up with the design concept of an “ice cream experiment” in Downtown Savannah.
The team of students first met Southern Cross Hospitality owner Anthony Debreceny, discussed his vision, and visited the site.
Debreceny told SCAD that he wanted to highlight the unique flavor
combinations found in Asian cuisine and push people out of their comfort zones. Ice cream is such a traditional dessert, and Doki Doki’s goal is to encourage customers to look towards the future, play around, and find a new way to enjoy the classic treat.
Keeping this in mind, the team landed on the name Doki Doki because it is a Japanese phrase meaning “to feel your heartbeat, specifically when anticipating that something wonderful is about to happen.”
The group then worked nearly non-stop for 48 hours to turn the feeling into a visual concept that features teal walls, clean tile floors, a mural with pops of bright yellows, blues, and pinks, split flap signage, live plants and a beautiful counter spread of ice cream, gelato, mochi and more. The space is clean and energized with color.
“The whole space was designed to make a statement and make the customer feel inspired to play and get creative,” said Suwade Pe Than, a SCAD student on the Doki Doki project. “Doki Doki is here for us to be free and experiment any time.”
“I’ve been a part of so many projects at SCAD,” Than said. “This Doki Doki project has to be the most cohesive I’ve ever seen, where everything just tied so well together. SCAD has cracked this code that anything creative needs collaboration. We can’t just work by ourselves on this project. Collaboration is key and it’s such a big thing in the SCAD community- in-studio and outside in the community. We’re always wanting to create something bigger and out of the box.”
The students’ design concept was exactly what Debrecney dreamed of for Doki Doki. He told SCAD, “the students exceeded our expectations, and we are ecstatic with the outcome.”
Today, Doki Doki is open from 12-10 p.m., 7 days a week. Since opening, students, tourists and locals have flocked to see the bright, bold space for themselves and to get a taste of quirky ice cream flavors like Chipotle Brownie, Fruity Pebbles, and Black Sesame.
When asked what it feels like to see her and her peers’ design come to life, Than said, “To have the whole Savannah community experience every little part of what we created with Doki Doki, it’s phenomenal. I think it’s very rare for a student to be a part of a project that is physically open and finished. I’m so thankful to be a part of it and be given these opportunities.”
The SCADpro collaboration was led by SCAD’s preservation design chair and professor CT Nguyen. Last year, Nguyen led another team of students to design features of another Southern Cross Hospitality restaurant, Ukiyo.
To learn more about Doki Doki and Southern Cross Hospitality, head to dokidokiicecreamery.com or check out @dokidokiicecreamery on social media. To learn more about SCADpro, visit scad.edu/about/scadpro.
This article appears in Connect Savannah | October, 2023.
