Moments after learning she had won a $2,000 first-place prize in a student design competition, Kate Rohrer, then a junior at Philadelphia’s Moore College of Art & Design and a self-proclaimed overachiever, rushed off to her restaurant job. The catch: She had to wait for receive her check at the formal ceremony two weeks later. On her walk to work (her only mode of transportation since she had “zero dollars” to her name), she called her mom to share the good news, laughing that she had no money to show for it. “One day you’ll look back on this moment and tell this story,” her mom predicted.
When the check finally arrived, it no doubt came in handy, but so did her gig as a server at the Continental, Stephen Starr’s entry into Philly’s dining scene. It led to an internship elsewhere in his operation, where Rohrer discovered a calling for restaurant design. She had always been creative—she remembers “constantly drawing, painting, and finding ways to reuse objects”—and Moore’s financial aid package and proximity to her hometown in Bucks County had lured her to stay local when it came to choosing a college. It proved a fortuitous decision. “Seeing what Starr was creating in the early 2000s inspired me beyond belief,” she says.
Upon graduating in 2005, Rohrer landed at local hospitality design studio Daroff Design. She witnessed firsthand the “well-oiled machine of a larger interior and architecture firm” but still found something missing. She left to work alongside designer Chris Sheffield at his boutique Philadelphia firm, SLDesign, but after the birth of her son, Oliver, in 2012 she took another leap of faith and went out on her own. “Maybe it was some strange motherhood superpower flowing through me,” she says. “I saw an opportunity to make this design career I love so much work on my own terms.”
In the past five years, Rohe Creative has been the go-to firm for restaurant groups like Schulson Collective, Safran Turney Hospitality, and Fearless Restaurants. Beyond her hometown, there’s been F&B projects for the Diplomat Beach Resort in Hollywood, Florida and Houston’s forthcoming C. Baldwin Hotel. She’s also made a recent move into designing custom fabrics and wallpapers that align with her ethos “to push herself to do the most special thing every time,” she says.
