How I shipped Granola’s San Francisco office in one 14-day trip

When I mention that I designed and furnished Granola’s San Francisco office in two weeks, the response is usually the same: a look of horror and a comment along the lines of “that’s insane”.

But, actually, I think of it as a decent amount of time to get it done.

And okay, I didn’t have accurate measurements, or an idea of the space, or any contacts in the US, let alone in San Francisco. But what I did have was a very clear vision to work from, and a very replicable Granola vibe that made it all feel really doable.

We’re always getting stuck into an idea and seeing how it pans out at Granola, and our London office has followed the same pattern: find out what works and keep doing it, and ditch anything that doesn’t serve us. So having spent the last year iterating the London office, I knew exactly how to approach the space in San Francisco.

The London look

When I joined Granola in early 2025, the team had just moved into its first real office: an unmanaged space, unfurnished, unstocked, no support, that they could make entirely their own.

For a while, all they had were beanbags and a lunch table. No one complained, but beanbags were not a serious long-term plan.

The founders knew what they didn’t want: nothing corporate, and definitely nothing that felt like “corporate being fun” either. The office needed to be genuinely homely and creative, a place where random objects would stack up on unruly shelves reflecting the personalities that inhabited the space.

We opted for vintage furniture to feel more grounded and human, rugs to bring in colour and life, and plants, plants and more plants. I sourced giant modular sofas that could seat the whole team, paper scrolls for engineering “principles” to be scribbled onto, and an unbelievable number of armchairs for the inevitable moment at 3pm when people want to get comfy.

A never-ending story

As the team grew, the office kept changing. One floor became two, then three. One sofa became two. Two lunch tables became four. We moved teams around, added collaboration spaces, hosted bigger events, and kept learning what made the space work.

A key principle was to make it as easy as possible to work together. The team made suggestions and we implemented the best ones: you’ll find whiteboards on wheels on every floor for when a quick huddle turns into a full problem-solving session. Armchairs are paired for quick one-to-ones, and there are piles of stools at the end of every desk bank so you can grab one to work through something at a teammate’s screen.

Plus, these guys work hard, so the office often has to be a nice place to be at all hours. That means lamps everywhere (every new starter gets a lamp budget), a constant supply of snacks (we have a Chief Snack Officer), drinks (and a Chief Drinks Officer), and even fresh flowers weekly (you see where this is going). The official titles started off as a bit of an in-joke, but now I’ve devolved specific responsibilities to eight people in the team. Chief Condiments Officer, anyone? I’m not sure they’re ever going away.

The dos, but also the don’ts

We also learned what we didn’t need. We prefer trinket-covered shelves over clear desk policies, so we don’t need personal lockers. For events, we don’t want stacks of conference chairs, we need sofas we can move around. We don’t need pristine office brand furniture. We prefer a pair of armchairs found on Facebook in their original 1960s fabric.

After a year of curating the Granola London office, we had a playbook: warm, homely, hard-working, flexible, a little unruly, and full of signs that real people spent real time there. So when I headed off to San Francisco, I knew exactly what the end result was going to be, even if I wasn’t quite sure how we were going to get there.

Over to San Fran

From the first photos, the office felt like Granola: wooden floors, tall ceilings, and a big open space with none of the polish of a corporate high-rise. The founders saw it on a trip to SF, gave it the green light, and I booked a flight. The lease was signed while we were still in the air.

I landed with a blank floor plan, a wonky video tour, and my partner, who I’d convinced to join the mission. First job: get inside and work out what we were dealing with.

The space was bigger than expected, with a mouldy kitchen, stained carpets, and a lot of potential. After taking measurements and deciding the kitchen had to go, we started hunting for the essentials: desks, chairs, meeting room furniture, phone booths, and anything that would make the place feel less like an empty shell.

The next few days were a blur. Some days were locked in a dark hotel room sourcing secondhand task chairs to be shipped from New York and buying up every available used phone booth. Other days were spent digging through salvage yards for mid-century tables and mining Facebook Marketplace.

We got to grips with the courier, contractor and payment landscape over there, and by day six the orders came rolling in. The contractors turned up to start ripping out the kitchen cupboards, pulling up carpets and putting pieces together.

That rug really tied the room together

Once the basics were in, we spent the next week making the office feel properly Granola. Where did the light fall for best whiteboard work? What would make a cosy nook? Where would people naturally gather?

One of my favourite missions was driving through a redwood forest to collect Granola-green stools from a little town north of SF. On the way back, we bought cacti from someone’s doorstep. That became the rhythm of the trip: always hunting for the practical thing we needed, and the odd little thing that would make the office feel human.

One of the final missions was hitting up Home Depot for the essential plant install. Clusters of jungle were an essential ingredient of the London office and brought life to the space, so we bought up every palm and bird of paradise, plus piles of perlite and clay pots.

On day 11, with a third carful of Ikea essentials, three more last-minute deliveries of Facebook finds arriving, and the help of a pair of contractors who had basically become part of the team, we got the space ready for the team to move in the next day.

Fridges were stocked, paint was touched up, flowers were set out. We put lamps on timers and fired up the coffee machine. We were still building stools and installing meeting room tables late into the night. But by morning, it felt like somewhere people could walk into and get straight to work.

This mad two-week dash to fully install the office was not what I had been asked to do. The brief for the trip was MVP: desk, monitor, internet. Enough for the team to land and work.

But I know that our space does so much more than give people somewhere to plug in. It shows prospective hires, guests and customers who Granola is. It gives the team a place they actually want to spend time in. It hosts our events, lunches, late nights, whiteboard sessions, and everything in between.

So MVP didn’t feel like enough. If the office was going to set the tone for the new team in San Francisco, it needed to feel like Granola from day one.

Moving the team in the next morning was the best part. They loved it, and immediately settled in and got to work. I told you this team works hard!

Two cities, one office

Just as we boarded the plane home, an email came in from a furniture buyer the brokers had put me in touch with. She’d come back with five armchair options.

By then, we were already done.

I don’t think an external company could have worked on our timescale, or maybe it’s more accurate to say that we couldn’t work on theirs. When you’re a growing company and you really care about the details, nothing’s ever going to live up to having someone invested, making calls in real time.

So now we have an SF office that feels like a true extension of a space in London. Same stools, same rugs, same lighting, same wifi names. Same intention: make it easy for people to do good work together.

The job’s not over, of course. Granola’s still growing. The London office already needs to morph again and the SF office will probably expand in the next year or so (we’ve got our eye on the plot next door). We’ll probably need more help as the jobs get bigger, we get that.

But like loads of things at Granola, these two offices feel like a really solid foundation for how things will grow from here. Hopefully with our guiding philosophy of fun rugs, jungles-worth of plants, good coffee and plugs where you need them.

Did we mention we’re hiring in SF and London?