WildSugar Cafe & Alfresco

Design Team : Madhuri Gulabani, Pooja Bhattad, Sidhita Zanvar
Photography : Kanti Mohire
Text : Madhuri Gulabani
Graphics : studio MG
WildSugar Cafe & Alfresco:
WildSugar, a homegrown brand rooted in the heart of Belgaum, envisioned a new café that captures the city’s warmth, spirit, and layered culture. Drawing from a mid-century modern aesthetic, the design adopts a material palette of wicker, fluted glass, brass, kadappa, and tandur—timeless, locally resonant materials that ground the space in its context.
As WildSugar embarked on a rebranding journey, retaining visual cues from its original identity felt essential. The exposed brick walls—now painted white—preserve a sense of raw familiarity while introducing a fresh, light-filled atmosphere. The site itself offered a spacious, well-lit shell with minimal columns. To break down its vastness and cultivate intimacy, the plan was articulated into distinct programmatic pockets: a coffee and cake bar, a quiet reading corner, a retail nook for fresh breads, a compact kitchen, an open diner, and a flexible co-working/event zone.
The ceiling—painted in WildSugar’s signature teal—anchors the entire space, offering a bold contrast to the warm brass lighting profiles, each echoing curved forms from the café’s new brand identity. The dark ceiling also brings a sense of proportion and coziness to the tall volume. Meanwhile, the flooring stitches together tones of kadappa, kota, and tandur in diagonally set vitrified tiles—an elegant nod to the regional flooring patterns that subtly inspire nostalgia.

A Story Told Through Art
The café’s walls are a canvas for Belgaum's small-town charm and layered colonial past. The custom artwork by Nisha Vikran and the Fingerprint collective in the diner reflects the sentiment that “everyone knows everyone,” rendered in Kalighat folk style—graphic, whimsical, and striking in presence. The feature mural, The Picnic Laze, imagines a leisurely afternoon in royal nostalgia: nawabs, picnic baskets, mimosas, and ukuleles come alive through expressive brushwork and exaggerated action lines. Together, the artworks add a layer of humor, memory, and emotional texture—making the space not just visually rich, but deeply personal.

The Alfresco: A Shared Front Porch
An underutilized 2.75-meter setback evolved into a generous alfresco space—now functioning like the city’s shared front porch. Crafted in brick and concrete, the outdoor zone features diagonally arranged booths that gently carve out semi-private enclosures. These booths, inspired by the “kattas” found in Indian parks and old homes, are reimagined here with a calm, architectural rhythm.
Warm lighting and soft shadows animate the alfresco as evening falls, drawing people in. But more than the architecture, it’s what the space holds—chatter, chai, stolen glances, and unhurried conversations—that makes it come alive. The alfresco isn’t merely an extension of WildSugar. It’s a space that belongs to the city—its people, its stories, and its many golden-hour moments.