The struggles of hospitality in its traditional inner-city heartlands may have had a devastating effect but, says Hamish Smith, bars have opportunities in other areas.

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In the past year, we’ve seen the loss of Nightjar Carnaby, Laki Kane, Cafe Baggio, Three Little Words, Ego Death, The Natural Philosopher, Ojo Rojo, Orchid, Coupette Atelier, Hacha Brixton, The Watermark. Many more slipped away quietly. It’s not just indies that are suffering. The Simmons chain – which I always assumed would survive a nuclear event, serving happy hour cocktails to the cockroaches – went into administration, shedding sites in the process. It’s not a bloodbath for everyone, but as an industry, we’re taking daily casualties.

The coroner’s reports are almost always versions of the same impossible equation: rising costs x falling custom. It’s the perfect shit storm. Wage stagnation and the mushrooming cost of living have picked the pockets of the middle classes. Meanwhile, the country’s relationship with alcohol seems to be changing in a way that’s more pleasing to doctors than distillers.

What’s that coming over the hill? It’s Generation Sensible. But while much is said about how the gym is the new pub to the young, health anxiety seems like it’s also reached the middle aged. The mid-life crisis is a Thursday night curled up with a Tim Spector book, trying to eat your 30th plant of the week without nibbling on the bathroom aloe vera. 

Then there are the weight-loss drugs – estimated to have about 1.5 million users in the UK – which not only suppress appetite, but dampen the desire for drinking. How many of these people were your regular midweek cocktail drinkers? To think, 20 years ago we lived in Binge Britain, when the high street was crawling with booze fiends, fighting over pints and girls named Stella.

Yet, a diminishing consumer base would be manageable if it weren’t for the rising costs of pretty much everything a bar buys, including labour – and most unforgivably the deaf-eared rises in taxation. The government can’t be blind to hospitality’s hardship, though when it comes – it has to come - any relief around National Insurance, VAT, corporation tax and business rates may be too late.

And what of bars’ brand support? When most spirits categories are down by 10%, marketing is the first casualty of the cull. The big-name indies that win the awards, the globally famous hotel bars and the volume players that have buying power can expect to still negotiate business-supporting incentives, but the reality right now is that brands are not able to support the bar industry like they used to.

Where people live, not where they work

If consumer behaviour will not bend to bars, it follows that bars must bend to them. Operators looking to open new venues must fish where the fish are, because increasingly stocks are low where once they were high. The high street site, with its high rents calibrated to the old expectation of thronging footfall and distorted by loss-leading chains, is not the pinnacle of hospitality it once was.

A few gilded postcodes aside, residential areas, with their lower rents and dressing-gown demographic, are making more sense by the day. It’s not as if the local model is new – pubs worked this out a few hundred years ago with locations on residential corners.

Ojo Rojo, the Class Bar Awards-nominated agave bar, closed because Bournemouth town centre isn’t what it was, but its plan is to now open where people live, not where they used to work. The popular Watermark in Leeds closed in Leeds city centre too – the next iteration, pledges Dariush Afshar Haghighi, is the bustling burbs. I’d bet Couch – a small bar with elevated drinks in Stirchley, Birmingham – wouldn’t have worked 10 or 15 years ago, but now it thrives.

In Sheffield, Jack Wakelin and Tom Aronica’s Bench serves some of the best cocktails and small plates in the city, but all from the village-like neighbourhood of Nether Edge. The pair have been creative with their locations – The Pearl and Bench La Cave taking up residence in the towering Brutalist estate Park Hill that looks over Sheffield, which has a couple of thousand residents who must now ask themselves how much they like climbing hills for a drink.

Beyond the bar

If you are one of the flagship indie cocktail bars in your city, why not see if you can collaborate with the city’s best hotels? As operators, hotels tend to be good landlords – or it could be as simple as bottling your offering for their mini bars.

Where else is there footfall and underwhelming drinks? Imagine if there was a Swift in every airport terminal around the country? Spending-wise, the holiday is ring-fenced from everyday austerity. And what about ferries and their terminals – many of which still seem to live in the 1990s – and trains? Tayer + Elementary RTDs are now served on the British Pullman. Train stations could do with more than Leons, florists and chairs delivering massages.

If the gym is the new pub, it should also serve some drinks. Many sports clubs do – if you’re in the market for a bad Mojito. What about corporate hospitality? Event spaces? Private members’ clubs? Start the conversation. Take your product to the people. Create a branded mobile bar that does events in your local area. It’ll diversify your bar’s revenues and – crucially – provide free word-of-mouth PR to your bricks and mortar site.

The high street will come back, disposable income will return one day. But you might not want to wait. For now, fish where the fish are.