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How futuristic design and cocktails come together in Atlanta’s coolest bar
Courtesy of Little Trouble
Ian Jones is the owner of Little Trouble, a hip bar in Atlanta, plus two other hotspots in the city, the Victory Sandwich Bar and S.O.S. Tiki Bar. Design is a big factor in all three establishments, and their websites are built and hosted by Squarespace. We asked Jones about his inspiration for Little Trouble, his design background, and growth of his businesses.
One review of Little Trouble said it’s tough to know whether to call it a restaurant, a club, or a bar — but that it’s easy to call it cool.
We’re definitely a bar. It’s a sort of Pan-Asian-style cocktail bar. A neo-Tokyo, sort of Blade Runner-esque cocktail bar. We wanted to build a bar that felt like you had just found it down a random side street in some sort of future metropolis. And we hope to surprise people with our food when they have it.
Courtesy of Little Trouble
Were you inspired by a place you once found on a random Asian side street?
Nope. I have a design background, and I’m interested in all sorts of things, including film. And you just see all these amazing sets in films, these amazing worlds. But no one builds those places. So we thought, “Let’s just be real dummies and build a place that looks like a place you’d see in a movie. A place that looks awesome.” We refer to Little Trouble as a bad-guy bar — that place where you walk down a long hallway and then in the back there’s a round table and all the bad dudes are there.
Do people come for the design?
I think that every part of a successful bar plays a role. Some people might come for the design and then really enjoy their experience. Some people might come for the product and might really learn to love the environment. I think Little Trouble just does a really good job of taking you out of downtown Atlanta.
“I like the idea that a dining or drinking experience can transport you.”
You have other spots in Atlanta, a sandwich place and a tiki bar. Do you try to dig down into a design idea for each one?
We open places kind of because we get sick of eating and drinking the stuff at our other places. So we open places where we can have different drinks or different food. But I do like the theater of different cultures. You can experience things that are maybe foreign to you, and you can learn from that. I like the idea that a dining or drinking experience can transport you.
Courtesy of Little Trouble
Was that theater, that design element, important to you in building a website?
Definitely. On our older websites, I had some issues; you had to tweak a lot of things to get a clean design. And then updating was difficult. Squarespace seems to actually focus first on quality design — they offer some great templates as opposed to a really basic template where you’ve then got to do all the design work yourself. We work with graphic designers and people who still tweak our Squarespace a little, but it starts way farther ahead than a lot of other options. I wouldn’t say that I’m some crazy artiste, but I appreciate clean design and simple design. It’s well thought out.
“In this business, a good website helps tell the story of where a customer is going, especially if they’ve never been there before. You get a vibe.”
Does a great website help you build your business?
In this business, a good website helps tell the story of where a customer is going, especially if they’ve never been there before. You get a vibe. Our Little Trouble website is a little twitchy, a little dark, a little mysterious. But you can still see what’s happening. We use photography to give you a preview. We find that Squarespace tends to offer a lot of almost portfolio-driven websites, so they help when we’re focusing on photo-driven marketing.
What’s your next project?
It’s your grandparents house. It’s a ’70s, ’80s childhood nostalgia theme. Not in your face, but there’ll be those elements that remind you of time at your grandparents’ house, that sort of thing. We’re kind of regressing from all of the cocktail culture and just doing a bar. We’ll have fun with the fact that it’ll be a lame place, but a fun lame place.
Does that mean the website will be grandparents just calling and saying, “Why doesn’t the computer work”?
We’re probably going to have to find a way to make a Squarespace site that looks like a cheesy chain restaurant’s.