About Breakthrough Design Studio
Breakthrough Design Studio is an operator-led hospitality concept, design and development practice founded and led by Rish Saini.
- Established
- 2018
- Founder & Director
- Rish Saini
- Work
- Restaurants, cafés, bars and breweries, from new openings to repositioning
Uptown Escape, Guwahati
Restaurants designed from the business outward.
Many restaurant projects begin with the room. BDS begins with the business the room has to support: who the guests are, when they come, what they spend, and what the venue must earn to justify its site and its fit-out.
Those answers become the brief. The concept is written to meet it, the menu follows the concept, and the kitchen, layout, service and brand are planned around what the menu and the guest require. None of this makes design less important. It makes it better briefed.
The work is judged in the months after opening, when the venue has to trade without its designers in the room.
What BDS brings together
Some projects need every discipline, others only a few. Either way, they are planned against one another, because a decision in one changes the rest.
- Concept developmentWhat the venue is, who it serves and the occasions it is built around.
- Hospitality strategySite, customer, price point and the commercial case the concept has to meet.
- Restaurant designInteriors planned around covers, kitchen flow and service routes as well as atmosphere.
- Food & beverageMenus and beverage programmes, settled before the kitchen is drawn.
- Bars and microbreweriesBar and brewery programmes planned around range, speed of service and margin.
- OperationsSystems, staffing, training and pre-opening plans that let a team deliver the concept.
- BrandIdentity and graphics drawn from the same idea as the venue.
- MarketingPhotography, content, social media and the website, carrying the concept beyond the room.
- GrowthRepeat visits and reputation: the result of the whole guest experience working consistently.
Why BDS exists
Restaurant projects are often divided between specialists. A designer draws the room, a consultant writes the menu, an agency handles the brand, and the owner is left to make the pieces work as one business.
Each piece can be well made and the whole can still fail. A service style can need more staff than the price point will carry. A brand can promise a different place from the one guests walk into.
These disciplines should not be developed independently of one another. Rish Saini founded BDS in 2018 to hold them in one brief, so that every decision is made with the others in view.
Founder
Founded by Rish Saini
Founder & Director
Breakthrough Design Studio
Founder & Director
Director
Rish Saini started out serving tables. Restaurant ownership, design and brand building followed.
He is Founder & Director of Underdoggs, the sports bar brand founded in 2011, which now operates ten locations across India, with six more under fit-out. He personally designed five Underdoggs venues: Aerocity, Cyber Hub, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Amritsar.
Mrs Kaur’s Bakery & Cafe was founded in Khan Market in 2006 by his father, Preet Saini. Rish is its Director, and he personally designed its Golf Course Road flagship in Gurugram.
He creates restaurant concepts from the operator’s side of the table. The questions BDS asks of a new concept, about spend, covers, kitchen capacity and staffing, are the ones he answers in the businesses he directs. He also leads AI for Hospitality (opens in a new tab), a separate platform sharing practical AI methods and resources, with private advisory for restaurant, bar and café owners.
Two decades in hospitality
2006
A hospitality career begins
Rish Saini starts out in restaurants in the United States.
2009
Director of Mrs Kaur’s Bakery & Cafe
Rish becomes Director of the bakery and café brand his father, Preet Saini, founded.
2011
Rish is Founder & Director, a role he still holds.
2018
Breakthrough Design Studio is established
A practice set up to develop concept, design, food and beverage, operations and brand together.
2018–2019
The first projects
Woks & Pans in Gurugram, Rish’s first design project outside Underdoggs, alongside Underdoggs Aerocity and Cyber Hub.
2019
Full conceptualisation and development of one venue: a café by day, a cocktail bar by night.
2025
An established brewery repositioned, from its interiors, food, menus and uniforms to eight beers on tap, up from four.
2026
A complete engagement: concept, design, brand, food and beverage, operations and handover, training, opening, website and social media.
Today
Leading BDS and AI for Hospitality
Rish leads Breakthrough Design Studio, creating restaurant concepts from scratch, and AI for Hospitality, his practical AI learning and advisory platform. He continues to direct Underdoggs and Mrs Kaur’s Bakery & Cafe.
How the practice works
BDS is operator-led, which means a design decision is weighed against covers, staffing, margin and service as well as against how the room looks. Every project is worked through the same chain, from concept and customer to brand and growth.
Some engagements run from concept to opening, as at Uptown Escape in Guwahati and Ālaya Café & Bar in Shillong. Others reposition a venue that is already trading, as at Nuts & Brew. Each discipline is set out in detail in the expertise section.
Selected work
Breakthrough Design Studio is Rish’s studio, established in 2018. The three Punjab venues of 2017 came before it.
- 2017–2019UnderdoggsVenue design
- 2018Woks & PansRestaurant design
- 2019Uptown EscapeConcept to completion
- 2025Nuts & BrewRepositioning
- 2025Mrs Kaur’s Bakery & CafeFlagship design
- 2026Ālaya Café & BarConcept to opening
Start with the business
BDS is selective about the projects it takes on. Whether the venue is new or already trading, the first conversation is about the business, before the room.
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