Shipping Container Restaurant Decor - The Caesar Mill Interview & Tour
The Caesar Mill Interview & Tour In this video, we visited our client, Tyler Cohen, who wanted us to design shipping container parts into decorations for his rustic restaurant.
We didn’t follow the process of this project being done since we did not have a YouTube channel back then, but we wanted to take you along as we interviewed the owner of The Caesar Mills and toured his uniquely designed restaurant.
We will find out why he decided to use container parts for decor, how we helped him design the structure, and what his customer’s think of his decorations!
VIDEO
Purchase Container Modification World Products Featured in The Video
YouTube Video Transcript
My name is Tyler Cohen. I own a restaurant in Martensville called The Caesar Mill.
Uh, we've been open since November 2017, and so far things have been pretty good here.
Basically, this was my first restaurant build. I've done construction on some restaurants, but to
take on the whole project, kind of jumping through hoops with the city,
seeing what we could and couldn't do, dealing with landlords, building materials, stuff like that.
Just what we could and couldn't do, while still achieving the look we were going for.
We were going for, for more of a rustic uh...
Kind of just nothing really perfect, beaten up, old looking. I think,
a little trendy, kind of newer style but, but still old looking, and uh.
I did a lot of the construction here,
so the less things needed to be absolutely perfect the better 'cause...
So we have the bar made out of shipping container material, and the entire backsplash behind me,
the back wall there with all the liquor bottles is, is container material, and the
washroom stall in the men's room is shipping container material as well.
And again, like, just being in the industry, I've fixed so many
bathroom stalls that thing's not going anywhere.
Back in my construction days, my brother always used to say that he was going to put his
kids through college [by] fixing washroom stalls and bars because their
doors are always falling off, they're not locked.
So we wanted to build something that, again, would be durable,
and, you know, guys can kick it, whatever.
Never gets too rowdy in here, but never gonna have any issues over there.
I had ideas of what, what I wanted to use for, for container material, the corrugations, and...
I just talked, talked with Channing and The Container Guy, and...
He gets a little more creative than I do because he's, he's around that stuff all day,
so he said like, "What if I put, like, an actual door on the bar that opens up?" you know,
or "What if we do the washroom where it's actually like the container latch that closes the door."
He did a lot of the design and making things work. There wasn't months and months
of planning involved, it was kind of just like, "Hey, can you build a bar like this?"
He's like, "Yeah, what do you want me to do with the rest of it?"
"I don't know. Can you hang it off the wall behind the bar?"
And it all just kind of worked, like even down to
the word, Martensville, fitting perfectly on the corrugations that was an afterthought.
I didn't go to Channing and said, "I need this many
corrugations, I'm putting in Martinsville above it."
The original plan was to buy a shipping container and use it as storage while we were doing the
majority of the renovation, and--and then towards the end just cut it up and turn it into a bar.
We ended up just renting a container and then using old, old sea can material that
Channing had laying around as opposed to cutting up a brand new container.
It's durable, for sure. And it does have that rustic,
kind of industrial look that goes well with the other building.
Just through being in the industry, you know, like bars are constantly getting
liquor and pop and all kinds of stuff spilled all over the place.
In the past, ones I built out of wood or plywood, they have a shelf life.
I'll probably have to take this bar out when
our lease is up. It's not going to be replaced before then.
[Channing] built the actual bar, the L-shape of the bar.
We kind of knew what we wanted based off the space we had, and after that we used poured concrete and
Live Edge for the bar top itself, as well as the tables in front of us that we poured in here.
Just had a bunch of guys flip them over
onto the bar, it was one of those things that just came together at like 11 pm one day.
When you get somebody that's never been here before, they kind of take a little bit of a
You can always tell when it's someone's,
someone's first time in here 'cause they run back to the table from the bathroom and they're
trying to convince their wives or girlfriends, "You gotta go look at the bathroom in there!"
It's, it's one of those bathrooms that's, "Can I? Can I go look?"
It's a cool space, and definitely people go in just to check it out,
right? How many times would someone go into the men's bathroom just to see what it looks like?
For a lot of places, kind of, the washrooms are an afterthought compared
to the rest of the dining space. We wanted it to fit in with everything.
It's definitely, you go in there and it fits the theme.
We've had someone actually just come in and straight up copy the design. Like, "I want, I want
my space to look like this. What did you do? How did you go about doing it?"
And I just put them in contact with Channing and
The Container Guy, [and] said, "He did everything."
Imitation, highest form of flattery.
We are hoping to expand our dining space into an outdoor patio. I've seen some of the stuff
Channing's done with full containers, turning them into kind of ice cream shacks or outdoor bars.
So, the plan is to have some corrugations out front on the side of the building over there,
as well as a kind of a container dining space with fold down windows, and again the roll top doors.
Just kind of expand, expand to the great outdoors.
There's not a lot for patios up here in Martensville, so just to kind of
have that extra element that people may have been missing out here. It would be really good for us.
I think for the most part the city was pretty happy to have
something like this come, come to Martensville. Not being a chain restaurant, locally owned,
kid-friendly, but still kind of that bar pub feel to it.
We're pretty unique in Martensville.
Fresh food, a lot of stuff is prepped in-house here. There's probably only
a few things on our menu that come in as the end product, everything else is made in-house.
And we're locally owned. We're not a franchise, we kind of have our
freedom to change our menu and cater to what people are wanting and looking for.
Oh, Caesar! We're The Caesar Mill,
Canada's national cocktail. We sell a lot, a lot of Caesars. I always, kind of,
make the joke [that] if we were sitting around the table at the lake and my grandma asked me to
make her a Caesar, I'd tell her "No," because I made so many Caesars, I'm just sick of it.
We open at 10 am for brunch, Saturday and Sunday, and 11 am Monday to Friday. We're open till 10 pm
Monday through Saturday. Right now, we're closing at 8 pm on Sundays, but as, kind of, the workforce
comes back, we hope to go back to our regular hours of 11 pm and 12 [am] on the weekends.
