A five person team planned a trip to Overland Expo East in November 2018 but, with only a month until Rivian’s debut, team members had to drop one by one until I was the only person left with a plane ticket. I still wasn’t old enough to rent a car under company policy so when I arrived in rural North Carolina to attend the event, I relied on a sparse smattering of Ubers and the kindness of people I met to get around.
The upside was that being alone made it easy to spark conversations and I was invited to share many a ground beef burrito in the cold rain. This allowed me to get a first hand look at how people cook and eat in vehicle-based camping set ups. I took these learnings back to the team.
In February, then creative director Larry Parker saw an opportunity to showcase the possibilities of the R1T gear tunnel with a built-in camp kitchen. My learnings served as the foundation for decision making as we quickly designed the camp kitchen to fabricate it in time for Overland Expo West 2019. That kitchen was originally only meant to showcase the customization possibilities of the R1T, but it was immediately embraced and quickly became synonymous with our brand. To this day as a R1T owner, the number one question I get is, “Do you have the kitchen?”
After the initial prototype, I passed the torch to Christian Elder, who designed the production camp kitchen. You can see his work here.
solo research @ a VERY muddy overland expo east 2018
card sorting activities and organic conversations at campsites
After deciding we wanted to show a camp kitchen concept at Overland Expo West, we had 2 weeks to move from rough foamcore prototypes and post-it sketches to design intent renders. Arthur Bledsoe led CAD development to ensure it could be fabricated by our in-house team.
Rivian's fabrication team is legendary. The kitchen couldn't have happened without their quick problem solving and years of experience.
Our rental vehicle wasn't big enough to transport the kitchen's shipping crate to the Expo grounds so a stranger offered to take it in his truck. The first chef's to use it were Rivian's CEO's mother-in-law and her best friend, cooking a family mushroom bolognese recipe for the 25+ Rivian employees working at the expo. It was a smashing success!
We got to give Tech Crunch's Kristen Korosec a tour of the kitchen at the Expo and they edited a fantastic video of the prototype's features.
Above: The team! Christian Elder, left, perfected the cork inserts that kept the Snowpeak dishware from rattling. Arthur Bledsoe, center, designed all the mechanisms and frame. Zab Steenwyk, right, did the design research and insight work, and designed the prototype kitchen.
When posted, the camp kitchen was Rivian’s most interacted with Instagram post to date and countless news outlets picked it up. To this day, the most common question I receive as a Rivian owner is, “Do you have the kitchen?”
What was intended to showcase the possibilities of a gear tunnel became a phenomenon Rivian was known for and so we confirmed we’d put it into production. After the prototype shown here, I was assigned to other projects and Christian Elder took up the task of designing Camp Kitchen 2.0. See his work here.
