Edmund Weil has seen Shoreditch morph in front of his eyes. What should an operator do when their bar’s surroundings change he asks?

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That said, it’s pretty rare for a hospitality scene to lodge itself so firmly in the cultural imagination as to achieve a truly lasting hold. Much more often, it’s a two-way street; destinations are shaped as much by the movement of people, money and urban planning than the venues that serve as their focal points. It also follows that to achieve long-term success, bars and restaurants must maintain an acute sensitivity to such ebbs and flows.

Shoreditch is an excellent case in point. When we opened Nightjar there in 2010, it was approaching the zenith of its ‘cool’ era. By 2014, it was home to three of The World’s 50 Best bars, and two of its top 10. A thriving established club scene co-existed with Michelin-level restaurants such as The Clove Club and Lyle’s.

The area was a melting pot, encompassing the buzzing creative community that defined the noughties, the influx of media and tech startups such as Vice, as well as what you might term ‘the Shoreditch House set’ bringing a little polish to proceedings. It felt like one of the most exciting places in the world to be in hospitality.

Sure, the slow, unstoppable forces of gentrification were on the march. It’s a story as old as urban living: area generates buzz; people and businesses flow in; landlords put up rents; independents get priced out; area becomes dull and expensive. Yet Shoreditch always felt as if it had the potential – like Soho – to evolve to become an institution rather than a mere destination.

Ten years on, it feels that much of that heady promise has evaporated. Much as it pains me to say it as an owner of two bars in the area, that particular thrill has gone. Traverse Shoreditch at midnight on a Wednesday and behold how the stragglers hurry from the High Street for the last train; how Rivington Street retreats into its own shadows with bashful gentility. 

How Hoxton Square – once an epicentre of revelry – stands almost empty. A shadow of the beautiful chaos you’d find in the same locations in 2018. Although we’re lucky that Nightjar remains a destination venue, early and late trade has thinned out considerably since the pre-pandemic heyday. Every bar owner in the area to whom I have spoken has reported that sales are down.

Root causes

All this begs the question – how did we get here? It’s been a source of some reflection on my part and I have concluded that the root causes can be distilled into three key areas:

• Although the pandemic ravaged hospitality across the country, Shoreditch was uniquely vulnerable to its lasting vicissitudes. The office population was dominated by tech and media – sectors that have largely converted to hybrid or full work-from-home models. This means that a lot of after-work trade has dried up, and as can be seen in areas such as Soho, the buzz created by this early evening crowd often forms the tinder to the spark of a really meaningful nightlife.

• Somehow, the majority of late licences in Shoreditch ended up in the hands of a single bar company. The resulting tacky neon homogeneity failed to attract the range of interesting and interested patrons that had characterised the area at its peak. Most importantly, however, is that this near-monopoly – alongside eye-watering rent rises – raised the barriers for most independents too high, so we saw no meaningful new entrants into the bar scene for most of the five years preceding the pandemic.

• Perhaps the least obvious but no less consequential, the worst-managed pieces of urban infrastructure I have ever seen: the conversion of Old Street Roundabout. Although the prime motive of improving road safety was laudable, the project has taken almost seven years (longer than the Burj Khalifa!) to complete! In this time, many local businesses, including my own, have faced serious disruption as pavements are narrowed and pedestrian routes restricted. What’s more, the result of these years of toil and disturbance is underwhelming in the extreme. Where the previous layout of Old Street station was warren-like but exciting, with each of the eight exits promising a different slice of nightlife, the new station has reduced this to three and spews most passengers out on to a soulless agora, parted from the heart of Shoreditch by a busy junction.

So, is it all over for Shoreditch? Despite the grim picture painted above, my prognosis is more nuanced and – dare I say it – more optimistic than the doom and gloom. My feeling is that even since before the pandemic, this has been an area in transition. Urban neighbourhoods rarely stand still, and for some years this Shoreditch has been on the path to a new identity; irrevocably different from what it was before – but not necessarily worse. Aside from the station redevelopment, several other oft-delayed construction projects have recently come to fruition. The enormous Art’otel on Great Eastern Street finally opened a month ago, joining Nobu Hotel, 100 Shoreditch and the Montcalm in a growing stable of luxury accommodation. Co-working spaces are on the increase, catering as they do to the new paradigm of flexible working, and with Tayer & Elementary, and now Seed Library and Silverleaf we’re finally starting to see some exciting fresh bar blood entering the area.

Whatever comes next for Shoreditch, hospitality will have its part to play. The current mission for our venues in the area is to get out into the new hotels and offices, connect with the changing demographic to understand how we might tweak our offering to better welcome them in. Likewise, with bar leases becoming available for the first time in over a decade, the opportunity arises for a new generation of bar entrepreneurs to take centre stage in the rebirth of a London nightlife institution.