Positive Experience creates Breaking News kiosk for Oatly at London Coffee Festival
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Positive Experience partnered with Oatly to deliver one of the standout experiential activations at this year’s London Coffee Festival, transforming the brand’s Spring/Summer Look Book campaign into a fully immersive live experience.
Created for the festival at the Old Truman Brewery, Oatly’s “Breaking News” kiosk reimagined the traditional coffee stand as a theatrical newsstand-meets-live newsroom installation, combining coffee culture, satirical storytelling and performance-led service design.
Designed and produced by Positive Experience, the activation featured a deliberately grumpy kiosk worker, perched pigeon installation, live CCTV feeds showing the behind-the-scenes drinks operation and a working conveyor belt system theatrically delivering drinks to festival visitors throughout the weekend.
The experience was inspired by Oatly’s Look Book Volume 3 concept which presents seasonal drinks collections through the visual language of a fashion editorial in a broadsheet newspaper, rather than traditional recipe marketing.
The menu featured inventive serves including Matcha Jell-Oat Shots, Burnt Lemon Cold Brew Tonics and Papaya & Basil Seed Smoothies, alongside guest roaster takeovers from DAK Coffee Roasters, Nomad Coffee and The Barn.
Positive Experience oversaw the full live experience delivery, translating Oatly’s creative vision into a fully operational festival environment while managing customer flow, staffing logistics and scenic execution. The agency also focused heavily on environmental authenticity and detail, curating shelving and integrated vegan products throughout the set design to make the kiosk feel intentionally lived-in and culturally credible.
The activation quickly became one of the festival’s most talked-about spaces, generating queues, social content and continuous crowd interaction across the four-day event.
“Experiential audiences increasingly expect more than just a sampling moment,” said Michelle Fischer, Creative Production Director at Positive Experience. “People want theatre, interaction and something culturally shareable. The challenge was creating an environment that felt playful and chaotic while operating seamlessly at festival scale.”
The project formed part of Positive Experience’s wider partnership with Oatly, which also included the UK’s first fully electric, zero-emissions coffee sampling tour as part of the brand’s Blind Taste campaign.
Rob Godfrey, Head of Brand UK&I explained:
“We loved working with Positive Experience to bring our vision to life and tell a genuine brand story using Oatly’s latest Look Book as inspiration. We wanted to push the boundaries of how people might expect Oatly to show up; we still sampled drinks, but we delivered them on a conveyor belt. We still served an oat flat white and gave away merch, but visitors had to ask a grumpy kiosk guy for them. Our shared obsession with every tiny detail is what really made the stand come to life and we see the success as a blueprint for future activations.”
Beyond Oatly’s headline-grabbing presence, Positive Experience delivered a total of 11 activations across this year’s London Coffee Festival for brands including Allpress, No Issue and XOXO, reflecting a wider shift in how brands are approaching experiential marketing.