Case study: A matcha bar for Octane Capital

Home Case Studies A matcha bar that pulled the room to Octane Capital

THE BRIEF

The NACFB Commercial Finance Expo is a fixture in our calendar. We’ve been there every year since 2022, working across multiple stands and 2026 was no different: four bars at Birmingham’s NEC. Two were coffee bars, one was a smoothie bar, and the fourth was something a little different.

Gecko Creative and their client Octane Capital wanted an exclusively iced matcha bar, fully branded with custom cold cups and bar graphics. Matcha has been part of our offering for a little while, served alongside coffee on busy event stands. The demand grew to the point where a dedicated matcha bar offering made complete sense, and NACFB with Octane Capital was exactly the kind of brief it was made for.

ON THE GROUND

Guests chose their milk (whole, semi-skimmed or oat) and picked from three drinks, each named to suit Octane Capital’s finance crowd: The Refurb Sweet Spot (strawberry), The Bridging Boost (blueberry) or The Smooth Exit (vanilla), the latter added as a bespoke request from Octane on top of our standard offering.

Each drink was made the traditional way, with premium-grade matcha whisked fresh to order, then poured over the syrup, milk and ice to create the layered effect everyone loves. Against Octane’s green branding, it looked striking in the cup and photographed even better. And of course, they tasted brilliant too.

160 drinks went out across the day, split fairly evenly across the three syrups. The most telling thing was how people found the bar. Word spread around the show floor and guests were crossing the venue specifically because they’d heard Octane were serving matcha. That kind of pull is exactly what a branded drinks bar should be doing. It drew people in and kept them there.

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Ian Brixton, Gecko Creative

"Just wanted to say thank you to you and your team for making the NACFB Show a real success for Octane Capital, and in particular to Phil for all his hard work. The client was really pleased with the success of the matcha tea and the popularity of it that they would like to book again for later in the year."

160

iced matcha's served

different flavours

We last worked with Gecko Creative at NACFB back in 2018. It was great to pick things up again, and better still to add a new client relationship alongside it. For Octane Capital, the matcha bar helped solve one of the hardest parts of any expo: getting the right people to stop. Once they were there, iced matcha in hand, conversations followed. The concept worked so well that Octane Capital rebooked us for another matcha bar, this time heading to Olympia in November for The Finance Professional Show.