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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
National
David Ellis

Umbrella Workshop: Discount Suit Company team launch new hybrid bar and shop in Shoreditch

Drink up: the lockdown delivery service is turning into a bar

(Picture: Press handout)

Shoreditch is set for a new bar as the team behind both the Sun Tavern and the Discount Suit Company open Umbrella Workshop next week, on March 7.

Just as DSC has no cut-price blazers and the Sun Tavern doesn’t, well, house the sun, Umbrella Workshop has nothing to do with brollies — though the space was once an atelier — and is instead a reference to the Umbrella Project, the company that looks after the other two bars, as well as Umbrella brewing on Holloway Road.

The space will operate as something of a hybrid, both a bottle shop and micro-bar; this bar will seat just 12, and will offer a menu that they say will update often, sometimes daily. It will act as something of “an incubator” for the other two bars; umbrellas won’t be workshopped, then, but cocktails will be. Tasting sessions and cocktail-making classes will also be offered.

Behind the bar will be rows of locally-made and independent drinks, as well as a choice of rare whisky, and these — as well as all the drinks on the menu — will be available to purchase for takeaway. The idea for the bar came as a result of lockdown, when the Andy Kerr, Stephen Thompson and Alastair Tatton began a home-delivery service.

“I’m so pleased to be opening the doors of the Umbrella Workshop. As our first new opening for a few years, we’re so excited to bring our online shop to life in the form of a new bar, which people can literally shop in,” Kerr told the Standard. “The hybrid system allows our customers to try cocktails before they buy them, but also acts as an incubator and development space for the cocktails we hope to put on the menus at the Sun Tavern and Discount Suit Company.

“With an ever evolving cocktail menu, it gives us a good space to see how new cocktails work in the bar environment, judge reactions and get feedback on the spot — if cocktail isn’t proving popular it won’t make it on to the menu at our other bars.”

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