Best New Site sponsored by Heineken – Cahoots Ticket Hall & Control Room

The site’s impressive attention to detail, with its wartime and train station design, also stood out with details including a repurposed ticket kiosk bar, pirate radio station kit, a picture of King George VI and Queen Consort Elizabeth, Winston Churchill and Vera Lynn mugs used to serve cocktails, cockney rhyming slang played in the toilets and team members dressed in 1940s outfits cheerfully greeting customers with a ‘What-ho’.

Impressive innovation

Strong innovation across this experiential site, whose strapline is ‘High Spirits, Scoundrels & Swing’ also impressed, including the Control Room’s vintage machines which dispense ‘Scoundrel’s Soda’ and a weighing machine-turned pulse reader that orders you a mystery cocktail to fit the diagnosis of whether you are a scoundrel, dame, copper or snitch.

Its excellent entertainment offer was another key achievement of the site for the judges, including the Control Room’s 1940s theme live music acts and its successful experiential/escape room style concept called ‘Bootlegger Breakout’.

Marketing details

The quality and creativity of the site’s drink offer also stood out as did the launch marketing for the Ticket Hall & Control Room, which included a ‘Win The Bar’ competition, which saw its 1940s enthusiast winner sharing in the bar’s opening week profits, helping decide on some of the site’s key details and have a plaque commemorating their opening of the site put up the bar.

The site’s innovations during Covid-19 lockdowns, including its take-away and delivery cocktails and developing its outside space, as well as its success in establishing a concept which appeals to such a broad customer base, from 20s to 80s, was also praised by judges.