13 August 2025 | Cantilever Bar Systems Ltd

Cantilever: In The Mix August

All the latest news from our design studio


What’s New - Dishoom Family Mela

This month, we attended the Dishoom Family Mela 2025. Dishoom are one of our long standing clients, and each year we love working with them to deliver fresh, new underbars for the latest exciting restaurant!The Mela is an annual event where teams from each restaurant, suppliers, designers and alike come together to celebrate all things Dishoom. Some of our design and install team attended to soak up the live music, food, drinks and games, as well as being able to say hello to lots of familiar faces.The Mela is just one of the many reasons we love working with Dishoom, and it’s always a pleasure to get together outside the normal working environment. We look forward to next year’s already! Our designer, Cerys, was at the Mela and had this to say:“The Mela was such a great day out – this year marked 15 years of Dishoom! It was fascinating to learn about their journey from the very beginning to where they are now. Their ethics and company culture are truly inspiring – their employees genuinely feel like part of one big family. Each year, they take some of their team members to India, and they even run their own Dishoom football league, where each restaurant branch plays against one another!The atmosphere was fantastic, and they really know how to bring the energy – from live performances by the Elite Drummers, to fun festival games like volleyball, cricket, and darts. Of course, we also can’t forget the incredible food options provided by their brilliant partners!”



Topic Of The Month - Juggling Aesthetics with Operational Design

At Cantilever, we emphasise the importance of operational design; underbars are our bread and butter, and we design to the millimetre to ensure they work in the most operationally sound way for bar staff.But that’s not all we do…Our full build projects also involve delivering the aesthetic elements and finishes of the bar, including bar fronts, bartops, bottle displays, lighting and footrails – to name a few! Whether we are working with architects and interior designers, or designing the bar

finishes ourselves, there is a vital level of coordination to ensure neither the bar finishes or the underbar are compromised. After all, a bar should look the part to entice customers to the point of service in the first place!Our designers are well experienced in both elements of bar design, and as we are fully bespoke, we can confidently resolve complex junctions and details to ensure the vision of an architect or client is successfully delivered. Behind every Cantilever full build, is a fully functional and resolved underbar.


 

Project Focus - Chelsea Football Club, London

In 2021, we were fortunate to be involved with the design of the new fifth floor bars at Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea Football Club, and we jumped at the opportunity!We were brought onboard as Design consultants, collaborating with the operators and the architects to overcome a unique challenge – designing a functional and ergonomic bar which could cater to over 1000 customers, in a very short window of time, all while maintaining the look, feel and footprint which the architects had requested.But no challenge is too big for Cantilever; and the result? A highly capable bar, able to service customers from all sides by introducing a backfitting draught dispense set-up,with several identical, mini cocktail stations on the underbar, all contained within the architect’s high-end materials and finishes.Our designer on this project, Gary, had this to say: “Chelsea FC remains one of the most interesting projects I’ve worked on at Cantilever. It was a great experience to work so closely with both the operators and the architects to help produce the end design. We were all agreed that the end result speaks for itself, and feedback since has only been positive.”