Malcolm Bedell wanted his fried chicken takeout place to be different from everything else nearby in coastal Maine. Instead of putting fish nets on the walls and hanging buoys from the ceiling, he painted three walls red, put a giant chicken mural on the fourth wall, and crowned his creation with a whimsical, decorative ceiling from Ceilume. It worked.
Bedell spent 15 years in graphic design and marketing before he decided to escape the desk and do something else. It turned out to be a sandwich shop that he christened Ancho Honey, in his hometown of Thomaston, Maine. It opened in July 2019 and quickly caught on, gaining a loyal following for its distinctive menu at popular prices. But Bedell noticed something interesting - they do more business on Sundays than any other day of the week. What makes Sundays so special? That’s the day they make fried chicken sandwiches.
He wondered if they should create a second place that just served chicken. Thus, Honey’s Fried Chicken Palace was born.
“The joke in that is clear,” says Bedell, “when you see the space. It could not be further from a palace.”
The new location, about 15 miles from the first one, was a former Chinese restaurant that was left in what Bedell describes as “disgraceful condition.” It had to be completely overhauled. He adds, “You dream big, and you reach for the stars.”
He started renovations in Oct. 2023, performing about 80 percent of the work himself. “I did everything that didn’t have the risk of killing me,” he recalls.
Bedell’s chosen design aesthetic was practical and insightful.
“At the end of the day, it’s a take-out fried chicken restaurant,” he explains, “so it’s not going to be too serious, or it shouldn’t be. It’s not going to be stuffy. We painted almost the entire interior red, because we tend to get a lot of our publicity through Instagram and social media. If you photograph anything in a red room, it automatically looks better. We knew we would instantly be improving everyone’s photos of the food, so that was key.”
“Then we added some rustic elements, but without putting big murals of tractors on the wall,” he says. “I did put giant chickens on the wall, though. The largest one doesn’t have a head, it’s been cropped out of frame, so it becomes an abstraction of feathers. When you don’t have a ton of money for design, making one really bold color choice or one really bold graphic does a lot of the heavy lifting for your design work.”
The ceiling was the only element from the old restaurant that he hadn’t cleaned out, because he didn’t think he could afford to replace it.
“I assumed I’d have to live with the ceiling that I had, and sort it out down the road, once cash flow evened out,” he says. “It was pretty bad. Some of the tiles were stained, others were broken down the middle and sort of put back in place. And dirty. I can’t overstate just how dirty. I never knew there were options except replacing your drop ceiling panels, which is expensive, and at the end of the day, you just have a ceiling that has no character, it just has super “dentist’s office” vibes. I didn’t think I’d be able to re-do the ceiling, until I found Ceilume tiles. I found them on social media. The design was what first caught me. And then, all the possibilities.”
Ceilume makes three-dimensional decorative tiles engineered to fit conventional 2x2 and 2x4 suspension grids. The “possibilities” he saw were the 40 different patterns both traditional and contemporary, and 16 colors and finishes - a broad range of design options.
“I eventually went with a less embellished, lower profile tile,” Bedell recounts.
The field tile he chose, Circle Star, is a clean geometric design, which he paired with Southland for the borders. He installed the tiles himself.
“I was sort of amazed at the abuse those Ceilume tiles could take,” Bedell adds. “You can really beat them up, but you can also cut them with scissors. They’re a great combination of light and easy to work with, super-easy to trim for our weird edge panels, and great-looking once they’re installed. I genuinely, really love this product.”
The four walls and the ceiling comprise all the major design elements, with the addition of some low pony walls to define traffic flow through the space. By April 2024, he had a chicken restaurant.
