Our own brand
Backyard BBQ Club™
Forty Never Felt So Playful. It started as a fortieth in a garden. It is now a brand of its own — an annual gathering, with its own look, its own line and its own plans.
- First outing
- A 40th birthday, at home
- Owned by
- The Ayaba Experience
- Format
- An annual BBQ gathering
- Next
- Merchandise
How it began
A milestone birthday at home, in a garden, with a mix of guests spanning three generations. No venue styling team and no event planner — just a host who wanted the day to feel deliberate rather than assembled, and who was going to be a guest at her own party.
Why it got its own name
The day could have been branded as The Ayaba Experience. It deliberately wasn’t. It got its own name, its own look and its own line — Backyard BBQ Club: Forty Never Felt So Playful — because a celebration belongs to the people at it, not to the people who made the pieces. Our mark stayed where it belongs: small, on the reverse.
That decision turned out to matter more than we expected. What began as restraint became a brand with a life of its own.
What we made
- Personalised cups and water wraps, so the most-handled objects carried the identity
- Custom stickers used across favours, packaging and drinks
- Signage and printables — directions, menus, the small answers people need
- A personalised Ludo set, built around the occasion
- Lawn games and table games, chosen for a mixed-age crowd and set up ready to play
- Thank-you details, packaged to be taken home rather than tidied away
Nobody moved a table or booked a caterer. What changed the day was that a dozen small things matched each other.
What it taught us
This is the lesson the whole business rests on. The same colours, the same typeface, the same finish, repeating from the drinks table to the thank-you cards — and something for people to do together. That was it. That was the difference.
It also confirmed the harder discipline: every piece has to earn its place. A personalised object that adds nothing is branded clutter, and a garden full of it would have felt like a promotion rather than a birthday.
Where it goes next
Backyard BBQ Club is now an annual gathering, hosted by us, and a brand we are building in its own right — with merchandise to follow. It stays distinct from The Ayaba Experience on purpose. One makes the pieces; the other is a party worth being invited to.