Blog
October 11, 2026
Every Sign in a Häagen-Dazs Café, Made in Pune and Fitted Overnight in Mumbai
Lit letters in two languages, pink neon, a gallery wall, four clocks we’d never made before and a cupboard that vanished. All made in Pune, all fitted in one night.
Case study · Häagen-Dazs café, Mumbai
“Papa, do you know how big Häagen-Dazs is?”
I'll be honest: I didn't know much about Häagen-Dazs when this job came in. I mentioned it to my daughter in passing, and she looked at me as if I had just admitted to never having heard of cricket. “Papa, you're working for Häagen-Dazs? They make some of the best ice cream in the world!”
So, no pressure. Here's the story of how every sign in their new café in Sky City Mall, Borivali, was made in our Pune workshop, and fitted in a single night.
The store
Sky City Mall, Borivali
What we made
Letters, neon, prints, clocks, a wrap
The journey
Pune to Mumbai, one tempo
Time on site
One night
How it reached us
An architect, a friend, and a very big name
Häagen-Dazs was opening a café in Sky City Mall in Borivali, Mumbai. The store was designed and built by interior designer Madhuri Maheshwari of Madhuri Maheshwari and Associates (MMA), Pune: a friend, and an architect we had worked with before on the Drunken Monkey sign board.
Madhuri took care of the furniture, the interiors, the paint, the finishing and the electricals. Every sign, print, neon and logo cut came to us.
The brand has its own guidelines, which stay with the brand. We read them first, made our proposal as we always do, and started cutting only after Madhuri approved it.
The architect
Meet Madhuri Maheshwari
Madhuri started her own practice in Pune in 2014, after years of high-end interiors and hospitality projects, including more than 150 shops for national and international brands. Her team designs and builds stores from the first sketch to the handover, for brands such as Puma, Levi's, Shoppers Stop, Nykaa, Baskin Robbins and Frozen Bottle.
On the other side of her practice, she builds natural, climate-friendly homes in mud, lime and wood, with arches, domes and vaults instead of concrete. Follow her work on Instagram.
Her work
A Baskin Robbins café: design and build by MMA.
Her work
A Frozen Bottle store: design and build by MMA.
Photos courtesy of Madhuri Maheshwari and Associates. These two stores are entirely her work; Orchid had no part in them.
Outside
The maroon that wasn’t in any catalogue
Out front, the name goes up twice: in English and in Marathi, as 3D lit letters 2.5 inches deep, with white acrylic faces and natural white LEDs inside, plus the oval logo on the curved front of the store. The English line is about 12 ft wide (146 in) and 15.75 in tall, the Marathi one about 6.8 ft (82 in) wide, and the oval logo 29 in across. The furniture team had already put up the ACP fascia, so our fitters drilled the letters straight onto it.
The hard part was the sides. Letter side profiles come in the usual colours: black, white, silver, red, yellow, blue, green. Häagen-Dazs has its own deep maroon, set by the brand's guidelines, and they wanted the letter sides to match the paint on their walls. So we mixed paint, tested it, mixed again, and kept going, batch after batch, until the sides matched the guidelines and the walls.
The English and Marathi letters laid out in our workshop before packing.
Up close
No edge, no bezel
Look closely at the faces: the white acrylic sits perfectly flat on the letter, with no rim or trim around it. By day they read crisp and clean; at night they glow bright.
The oval
A logo on a curve
The oval Häagen-Dazs logo sits on the curved front of the store, above the seating. Same build as the letters: a white face, maroon sides and LEDs inside, with the scalloped edge cut exactly as the brand draws it.
Night and day
From installation night to opening day
The letters went up at night, with the walls still masked. The next photos are the café ready for customers.
Installation night
Häagen-Dazs Café going up on the curved fascia.
Lit for the first time
The oval logo glowing above the sit-out.
Real photos from the night of the installation.
The sit-out
A gallery wall worth sitting under
The seating outside the café has a wall of framed prints: ice cream, drawings and bold illustrations, thirteen frames in all.
Ordinary vinyl would have looked out of place in a store like this, so we printed the photos on polyester photo film: bright, sharp and rich. The client had them framed, and our team hung them.
On the night
Thirteen frames, one layout
Every frame goes up to the architect's layout, measured from the floor and from its neighbours, so the wall reads as one picture.
Measure twice: the architect’s layout for the wall, with every frame’s size and position.
Inside
The menu wall
Walk in, and the first thing behind the counter is the menu: four boards on the wooden wall with the sundaes, signature creations, flavours and shakes.
Our part here was the print: simple, sharp photo prints on polyester. Madhuri's team set them behind acrylic.
A first for us
Four clocks, made from scratch
Look at the wooden wall behind the counter. Those four clocks, three round ones and a pink star, were made in our workshop.
It's the first time we've built clocks to a client's own design. Madhuri gave us the design and the clock movements (the little machines that turn the hands). Everything else is ours.
1
Cut the shapes
Circles and a star, cut from acrylic on our laser.
2
Layer them
Several layers for depth: a white face on a black disc, or white points on the pink star.
3
Print the design
The architect’s design printed straight onto the acrylic.
4
Fit the movement
Drilled and fitted with the movement and hands she supplied.
Before / after
The cupboard that pretends to be a wall
Next to the counter is a tall storage cupboard in three parts: two doors below and a door on top that opens upwards. Madhuri gave us its dimensions and a melting-ice-cream design: deep maroon at the top, pink in the middle, white at the bottom.
We printed the design on Wyte polymeric vinyl and wrapped the doors edge to edge, taking the print past the edges and round each door. Now it reads as one painted wall from top to bottom, and the storage has quietly disappeared.
Before
The bare cupboard on site.
After
Wrapped in printed polymeric vinyl, edge to edge.
Same cupboard, same spot. Taken on site by our team.
The detail nobody sees
Why the artwork got bigger
A print that stops exactly at the edge of a door shows a white line the day a corner lifts. So we added bleed to the artwork, extra print that wraps round each edge, and matched every curve of the melt across the three doors.
The site, the architect’s drawing, and our artwork with bleed for a clean wrap.
The neon
“Someday all ice cream is going to be made like this”
The brand gave us the line; we bent it in bright pink LED neon. Here's the tricky part: every word sits on its own piece of clear acrylic, cut to its shape. So each word is fixed to the wall separately, and the words still have to line up as one sentence, with the wires hidden behind.
A matching neon coffee cup glows on the maroon wall by the counter.
Up close
Where are the wires?
Exactly. You can hardly find them: they run behind the acrylic, so all you see is the glow.
The counter: the neon cup on the maroon wall, the quote at the far end.
From our floor to theirs
Tested in Pune, lit in Mumbai
Every piece of neon is switched on and checked on our workshop floor before it's packed. Then it's checked again on the wall.
In our workshop
The quote switched on and checked on our floor before packing.
On site
The neon coffee cup going up beside the counter.
Workshop test and installation night.
The night shift
Pune to Mumbai, one night, no excuses
Everything was built in our Pune workshop. Then it had to travel to Mumbai and go up in one go, because malls play by their own rules.
A mall won't let fitters work during the day, when it's full of shoppers. So we organise it all: the tempo, our team's travel, the mall's permission to work at night, and ID proofs of our fitters for the mall's floor manager, who issues a gate pass for each of them.
1
Load up in Pune
Letters, logo, neon, prints, clocks and vinyl, packed into one tempo.
2
8 pm: start
Gate passes in hand, our team gets to work as the mall closes.
3
All night: fit everything
Letters, logo, neon, frames, clocks and the cupboard wrap.
4
8:30 am: done
Everything in place by 8:30 the next morning.
The specs
What went into the café
Store
Häagen-Dazs café, Sky City Mall, Borivali, Mumbai (August 2026)
Architect
Madhuri Maheshwari, Madhuri Maheshwari and Associates (MMA), Pune
Outside
3D lit letters in English (146 x 15.75 in) and Marathi (82 x 15.5 in), 2.5 in deep, white acrylic faces, natural white LEDs, sides painted in the brand maroon, drilled onto the ACP fascia; lit oval logo (29 in)
Sit-out
13 photo prints on polyester photo film for a gallery wall (framed by the client, hung by us)
Menus
Photo prints on polyester (acrylic by the architect)
Neon
Pink LED neon quote, each word on its own clear acrylic plate, plus a coffee cup; wires hidden
Clocks
Four made-to-design clocks, three round and a star, in layered, printed acrylic
Cupboard
Wyte polymeric vinyl wrap, three doors, printed edge to edge
Transport
One tempo, Pune to Mumbai
Installation
By our team, overnight from 8 pm, with the mall’s gate passes
Opening a store?
What this café cost
Here is the final proposal we sent Madhuri for this café in August 2026, item by item, before 18% GST. Every store is different, so read it as a guide, not a quote.
Lit 3D letters and the oval logo
₹98,800
Laser-cut acrylic counter logos, non-lit (3)
₹7,200
Wallpaper prints on Wyte vinyl
₹40,000
LED neon
₹23,400
Round clocks
₹7,200
Star clock
₹4,200
Total
₹1,80,800 + 18% GST
Good to know
For your store
Plan lit 3D LED letters at about ₹2,000 per sq ft + GST and printed Wyte polymeric vinyl at ₹180 per sq ft + GST; your exact price comes with your proposal.
Brand guidelines
Send us your brand book with the drawings. We read it first, follow it, and keep it to ourselves.
Malls
We work to mall rules: night installation, gate passes and ID proofs for our fitters.
Outside Pune
For large store projects our own team travels to install; smaller jobs are shipped ready to fit.
Lead time
Fabricated signs typically take 1-15 days after you approve the proposal and pay, depending on the job.
Opening a store or a café? Send us your drawings and brand book, and we'll make a free proposal for every sign in it.
Other options
Start with these
about ₹2,000 per sq ft + GST
3D LED acrylic glow sign boards
Lit letters and shop boards, from acrylic box letters to channel letters like these.
See the sign boards page →₹180 per sq ft + GST
Polymeric vinyl prints
Printed vinyl that wraps furniture, doors and walls without a seam, like the cupboard by this counter.
See the shop page →Not sure which sign suits your store? Try the board finder in our sign board guide.
The sweet ending
One café, one night, every sign
Next time you walk past that maroon front in Sky City Mall, you'll know: every letter on it, and every sign inside, came from our workshop in Pune.
See every photo on the Häagen-Dazs café job page.
More ice cream, more signs
Case study
A sign that looks like it’s melting
Pink “melt” boards for Delrico Creamery’s ice cream outlets across Pune.
Read the story →Our work
A tagline in lights for Shahji Paratha House
“Delhi ki shaan, Poona ki jaan” in orange-on-white 3D LED letters.
See the job →Your turn
Opening a store in a mall?
Send us your drawings and brand book on WhatsApp. We'll make every sign in it, and fit them overnight if the mall says so.
Looking for any specific product?
Drop us a line. Send us your query. And we’ll get back to you with solutions and answers.
Mitesh Sanghani
Mitesh lives, mostly for Saturdays.
But when forced to work, you’ll find him heading Orchid Digitals – a printing press in Pune.
If it’s an emergency, try looking for him in the hills behind his house. You’ll almost certainly find him… lazing under a tree, with a book in hand.
