The Death of the Bar Cart

Welcome to The Trend Times, a column that explores design fads in the age of doomscrolling.

When I first got sober five years ago, I had to accept many tiny deaths. Some were easier than others—saying goodbye to the inevitability of ending any given night in a seedy nightclub, for instance, was a piece of cake. But letting go of my beloved vintage midcentury bar cart, purchased for pennies at a flea market on Long Island five personal eras ago, was more hard won. It was simple enough, with two levels of wood veneer framed by gold metal. But then there were the wheels: glorious clear plastic orbs filled with glitter (they didn’t work particularly well but the magic of the sparkle was impossible to ignore). I tried to use it for other things, like candles and tinctures, before eventually accepting defeat and selling it to a friend. During my early twenties in New York, when Mad Men was airing live, I’d seen the bar cart as the epitome of sophistication and adulthood; getting rid of it was, in part, letting go of that illusion.

In 2025, more and more of us are coming to a similar realization. Even if people aren’t going completely dry, studies show they are drinking less and less. There’s awareness around booze’s negative health effects and the heavily marketed allure of “wellness culture“; 57 percent of 3,400 surveyed millennials and Gen Zers would rather go to a gym than to the bar. The culture of the Swinging Sixties that necessitated bars in every glamorous executive’s office are long gone—many white collar workers don’t even leave their homes to clock in. If we have a tiny bit of extra space in our homes/offices, do we really want to use it for alcohol?

Funnily enough, the bar cart wasn’t originally designed to hold spirits—they were used as tea trolleys during the late 19th century. When Prohibition hit and people began to secretly drink in their homes, bar carts suddenly had a more nefarious use: storing contraband that could be easily moved from room to room. After the Volstead Act was repealed in 1933, they became a symbol of freedom and celebration. Postwar, in the 1950s and into the ’60s, the explosion of the suburban family home—with an emphasis on homemaking and entertaining—had housewives crafting their own tiny little bars, which were cheaper than going out, as the frugality of the war-time period still lingered. During this era, bar carts became lusted after modern design objects, often made by Danish designers like Hans Wegner and Poul Cadovius or for the more space-age-inclined, Kartell and Joe Colombo.

Our cultural obsession with midcentury modern began in the late ’90s and never really ended, so for decades, that meant that the bar cart was yet again That Girl. Even better is if you could possibly increase your property value by adding a wet bar. When Christina Higham, owner and principal designer of Sun Soul Style Interiors based on the North Shore of Hawaii, started doing interior design full-time eight years ago, she says “the bar cart was just having such a moment.” Her first job was at One Kings Lane, and required her to style many of them.

But since the pandemic, none of her clients have requested a bar (cart or wet); instead they want a coffee bar, or if they are indeed drinkers, a wine fridge. In her opinion, it’s not just that people are drinking less—it’s also about the kind of hosting they choose to do. Since the pandemic, she wonders, if “people are entertaining less”: “When people come over to my house, we just kind of pull stuff out—it’s not very sexy,” she says. Another side effect of Covid, and all the time it required us to spend inside, is that people are thinking differently about their spaces. “They want to invest in designing a home that works for them,” she explains, with an emphasis on their particular lifestyle, which often favors caffeine over liquor.

Even on the East Coast—where people party harder—nonalcoholic beverage stations are trending, says architect Rachel Robinson, who designs mostly residential projects in the New York area with her business partner/husband, structural engineer Michael Dunham. “We’ve actually, in our design process, started thinking about how those areas can take shape earlier in the process, and really making them central to our design work,” she says. For a recent townhouse renovation in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, they created a family room with two distinct beverage spaces, one for coffee and one for kids, who can access the under-counter fridge themselves.

For their clients who love coffee, Robinson says an amateur setup often won’t do. For a project in Midtown Manhattan, they plumbed in a professional-grade espresso machine. Similarly, a carriage house in Boerum Hill required a custom-built stainless-steel coffee center fabricated by a local restaurant kitchen maker. Increasingly, coffee seems to be taking over as alcohol’s millennial heir; egged on by the pandemic, in which coffee shops were closed and many transitioned to remote work, people became obsessed with recreating the experience at home. (And that’s to say nothing of the death of the third spaces like the communal coffee shop). Naturally, designers have taken note; in Magnolia’s The Established Home with Jean Stoffer, it feels as if she puts one in every project.

But is there really any difference design-wise between a bar that holds coffee and one that makes martinis?

“It’s about hiding things away more than showing things off. With coffee making, there are a lot of parts and pieces, and people want that to be available, but they want it to be also sleek,” Robinson says. “I think the finishes are probably a little bit more light and colorful than, you know, dark woods or anything like that that you tend to see associated with traditional bars.”

For Chad Hogan of Chandler Farms Design, who has cultivated a niche designing office spaces for nonalcoholic beverage brands like Coca Cola and Vitaminwater, the problem with bar cars isn’t just about lifestyle—it’s about utility. Though in theory they’re a functional object designed to be portable, you can’t really move them safely because of all the glass (and don’t get me started on the dust they accumulate). “If not used regularly, these carts sometimes become a catchall for all sorts of items that need to be stored or displayed,” he says. But that doesn’t always need to be a bad thing. “Bar carts have always been an interesting but sometimes overlooked piece of gear,” he adds, citing his friends who use one for “high-end cannabis” accessories. With his practice, this can sometimes be intentional. At the Liquid Death (a company that sells water) headquarters in Los Angeles, Hogan used stainless-steel bar carts in their BuzzKill Hair Salon for employees. In keeping with the goth vibe of the brand, they store hairstyling tools along with chainsaws and cleavers.

For those who don’t have torture devices they’re looking to stash—nor a budget to construct an at-home cafe—the problem of the bar cart remains. In my case, at a recent party I hosted with my husband (a casual light drinker), it was my lack of one that became an issue. One of my good friends who happens to be a harmless lush arrived late and came to me in a panic. “WHERE IS THE BOOZE?” he screamed from across the room after rummaging around my living room in vain, not satisfied with the beers, spiked seltzers, and wine in coolers outside. “Oh, sorry, it’s in the back of the pantry, bottom left, we don’t really use it,” I replied, a mortified hostess. Before I could get over to help him, he sprung into action, navigating a crowd just to get on his knees, unload bags of chips and boxes of pasta, before locating a sad, old bottle of Ketel One.

This one interaction was all it took for the bar cart to recapture my imagination. The next week, I scoured Facebook Marketplace and found a bright blue one from Loll made from recycled milk jugs, which is how I met Hogan, who was clearing out his wife’s office. It’s now in my living room, and features a modest spread of hooch should a guest ever inquire.

But don’t worry, there’s a dedicated spot on it for my incense collection, too.