Planning an office hat bar: the 4-week timeline

Week 1 — lock artwork and the date

Custom patches take two to three weeks to produce, which makes patch artwork the long pole of the entire project. In week one, two decisions matter: the date (check it against all-hands calendars, office-attendance patterns, and any parallel facilities work in the lobby) and the patch menu. Send whatever brand files you have — vector preferred — and we’ll return patch mockups in each construction so the approval is visual, not hypothetical. Everything else in the plan can flex; patch production cannot.

Week 2 — building paperwork and headcount math

Introduce us to your property manager by email and consider that job finished: COI, freight elevator booking, and the security roster are ours to chase. Meanwhile, get a real headcount estimate. Badge data or RSVP tools beat guessing — the difference between 200 and 320 participants changes hat orders, crew count, and service windows. Rule of thumb: expect 60–75% of on-site staff to participate when the bar is in a lobby they walk past anyway.

Week 3 — approve the hat wall and the schedule

You’ll sign off on the exact cap styles and colorways — we recommend two silhouettes, four colors for offices; enough choice to feel personal, not enough to stall the line. Then set service windows. Two windows beat one long slog: 11:00–1:00 catches the lunch flow, 2:00–3:30 collects the meeting-locked crowd. Post it internally with a photo of the actual patches; specificity drives turnout more than any “fun surprise in the lobby!” teaser.

Week 4 — run of show

We arrive 60–90 minutes before the first window, build, and do a test press. Your only day-of jobs: one internal reminder post when the bar opens, and someone to take the photo leadership will inevitably ask for. Strike takes forty-five minutes and the lobby is back to normal before evening security walks it. The following morning you’ll have our wrap notes — hats pressed per window, leftover inventory, and what we’d adjust for the next one.

Shorter runway? Three weeks is workable when patch art is approved in the first 48 hours. Two weeks means stock patch options only — possible, but the custom menu is what makes the format sing. Details on the office format live here; numbers live on the pricing page.