Face Plant Flagship

As Face Plant prepared to open its first North Portland location, the team wanted a restaurant experience as playful and considered as the menu itself. The space, a former McDonald's, gave them something to work with: a familiar fast-food shell ready to become something else entirely.

Kali Grey Art Consulting worked with the Face Plant team to bring in Portland artist Chet Malinow, whose sensibility matched the brand's retro personality and sense of humor. Together they developed a large-scale, hand-painted mural for the restaurant's glossy tile feature wall, one that pulls from the past without feeling like a costume.

The process went well past selecting an artist. Kali's team worked through design and production alongside Malinow, testing materials, refining finishes, and figuring out how a hand-painted piece could hold up on a commercial tile surface. The custom enamel finish, distressed application, and checkerboard-inspired composition all came out of that back-and-forth, each choice made to keep the mural feeling handcrafted rather than installed.

The finished piece gives the restaurant an immediate sense of itself. Customers walk in and the room already has a point of view — playful, a little nostalgic, entirely Face Plant.