clarity at the moment of change

The Gilded Rooster is a creative studio helping leaders make confident, high-stakes decisions at the intersection of brand, culture, and experience.


We work with organizations navigating change, scale, and reinvention.

what we help unlock

  • We believe in keeping things simple, smart, and human. Every project starts with listening and ends with something we're proud to share.

    We lead with Strategic Clarity, Human-Centered Design and Cultural Fluency.

  • We work at moments of transition, when the system is big, the variables are many, and the cost of getting it wrong is real. Our role is not to create noise, but to create clarity and conviction before the work begins.

    • CEOs, founders, and boards

    • Cultural and civic leaders

    • Organizations at inflection points

    • Teams navigating growth, change, or reinvention

Let's Chat

Meet jarrett

Gilded Rooster is a creative strategy studio led by Jarrett Reed, a senior experience and brand strategist with over twenty years of experience designing and delivering large-scale customer and cultural experiences. Drawing on work across retail, hospitality, and civic sectors, the studio helps leaders make confident, high-stakes decisions at the intersection of brand, culture, and experience. The approach blends strategic rigor with human insight to create clarity before action begins.

Let's Chat

Past Projects

brooklyn target

Led the transformation of a landmark Brooklyn theater into a modern retail experience, balancing preservation, community engagement, and operational performance. The project demonstrates how adaptive reuse can honor local history while delivering a commercially viable, future-ready store experience.

Adaptive reuse

starbucks

Led the strategy and experience design for a national remodel of the Starbucks-at-Target portfolio, aligning brand, operations, and guest expectations at scale. The program modernized the café experience while improving throughput, consistency, and long-term flexibility across hundreds of locations.

national remodel and experience reset

lake street Minneapolis

Partnered with community stakeholders to reimagine the Lake Street store following civil unrest, using community art and murals as anchors for healing, identity, and renewal. The project reframed retail as a platform for cultural restoration and trust-building, not just reopening.

community response and cultural rebuild

quang restaurant

Led the rebrand and physical transformation of QUANG, a multi-generational Vietnamese restaurant deeply rooted in Minneapolis. The work honored legacy while modernizing the space and brand, proving that cultural authenticity and contemporary design can coexist without dilution.

rebrand and remodel of family-owned institution

Places, Spaces and Brands that we’ve helped:

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Gilded Rooster partners with leaders at moments of change to provide strategic clarity across brand, culture, and experience. Engagements often include experience strategy, brand positioning, portfolio and program design, adaptive reuse and placemaking strategy, and decision support for complex, high-stakes initiatives. The work is tailored to the moment, not delivered as a fixed menu of services.

  • It begins with a conversation. We start by understanding the decision you’re facing, the constraints around it, and what success looks like. From there, we shape a focused engagement designed to create clarity and momentum without unnecessary complexity.

  • Gilded Rooster brings senior-level thinking from day one, combining strategic rigor with deep cultural and human insight. The work moves comfortably between boardroom, community, and design studio, allowing decisions to be both commercially sound and meaningfully grounded.

  • Collaborative, direct, and thoughtful. Clients experience focused engagement, clear points of view, and respect for real-world constraints. The process is designed to move quickly, ask the right questions early, and create alignment before execution begins.

  • CEOs, founders, boards, and senior leaders across retail, hospitality, cultural, and civic organizations, particularly those navigating growth, reinvention, or complex transitions.

  • Gilded Rooster is intentionally small and senior-led. When needed, trusted collaborators are brought in across design, research, and execution to match the scale of the work without adding unnecessary layers.

  • Engagements range from short, focused strategy sprints to longer-term advisory partnerships. Fit is defined less by project size and more by complexity, consequence, and the need for clear decision-making.

  • Yes. In addition to project-based engagements, Gilded Rooster supports leaders and boards through advisory roles focused on experience, culture, and long-term direction.

Let’s chat

Interested in working together? Fill out some info and we will be in touch shortly. We can’t wait to hear from you!