Location, Location, Location

Location, Location, Location

It’s not just the drinks you serve or the zingy interior that make a successful bar – if you want to be around in five years’ time, you have to open in the right place. Nushi Wijewardena gets all Phil and Kirstie on us as she finds out what it takes to find your dream venue

If, at a dinner party, you find yourself talking (as I recently did) to a ‘Starbucks location scout’ (someone who decides where the next Starbucks outlet should open), they’ll tell you that their industry-agreed sweet spot is halfway between a Nando’s and a tube station.

Actually, scratch that – if, at a dinner party, you find yourself talking to a Starbucks location scout, get new friends. Those kinds of dinner parties are exactly the kind you don’t need in your life.

Party conversation it may not be, but the ideal location for a new watering hole is a topic to which bar-owners necessarily pay a great deal of attention. The cocktail menu, spirit selection, music, concept and design may be the sexier aspects of owning your own bar, but get the location wrong and you might be the only one who’s sitting there on a Friday night to enjoy the ambience.

The thing about bars, however, is that there seems to be no industry-agreed rule on what makes a great location for one. And perhaps this is a good thing. Sure, maybe while you’re trawling red-eyed through the internet looking at sites for sale or pounding the pavement on a wet day in December looking for that perfect venue for your dream bar, you might find yourself wishing there was some bar-owning-by-numbers formula for a killer location. But as any bar owner will tell you, there are many different factors to consider, depending on what kind of bar you want to open.

Drinkers are increasingly seeking

out small, independent bars with character

The fact is, the features of an ideal bar location have changed over the years. Once upon a time, a successful bar simply had to be where all the action was – there was a definite sense of go-high-street-or-go-home. Back then, large companies dominated the market, so there was no sense in being tucked away on a side street.

But drinkers are increasingly seeking out small, independent bars with a bit of character, which means that positioning yourself between branches of Topshop and The Carphone Warehouse may not be the way to go. It also means that one size doesn’t fit all – thankfully.

If it did, we’d have an industry of… well… Starbucks.

On the other hand, you need a few pointers on the subject and mercifully there are plenty of varying voices of experience. We’ve canvassed a few figures who have recently opened their own places around the country to get you thinking about location.

Happiness Forgets
8-9 Hoxton Square, London, N1 6NU

This cocktail bar, which opened its doors earlier this year, is not only down-to-earth; it’s under the earth – occupying the basement of a Thai restaurant (which provides food for the bar’s customers). For the gents at the helm, Andy Bird and Alastair Burgess, the spot – on the north-west side of Hoxton Square, London – is idyllic. ‘The moment I walked in I thought it was perfect,’ says bar manager Burgess. ‘We got very lucky.’
Speak to Burgess for more than a second about location, however, and you’ll start thinking to yourself that luck probably had very little to do with it. ‘I searched for a site for a year,’ he says, ‘and what they say is true – finding the right spot becomes a full-time job. There were lots of options. I looked at a place that was just as good – a basement bar with a small outside space – but it was just five minutes too far away from everything else to work. In 10 years’ time it will probably be perfect as more developments will pop up around it, but for now it was simply too out of the way. Perhaps most business will come from word-of-mouth and great press, but you want people to be able to stumble upon it, too. This means the bar needs to be near other venues.
‘On the other hand, you don’t want it to be too near other similar bars. I was in Ibiza recently, and I noticed that there are so many ubiquitous bars that people spend more time wandering from one to the other than drinking in any of them. It’s important to stand out.’

Burgess’ top tips:

‘Don’t get too hung up on your bar’s concept. Find the location first and tailor the concept to it. All we knew is we wanted to open a bar with great cocktails and no poncey door policy. The rest fell into place once we found the site.’
‘Have a look at every site you come across. Don’t write anything off. Something that doesn’t look right on paper may turn out to be your dream venue. You never know how great a place can be until you see it. It’s a pain, but it’s worth the effort.’
‘Think about what’s around you: is it really built up? Is it residential? Tailor your concept accordingly. On one hand, a residential area may be great because you’ll get all the loyal locals in, but then think of the noise levels. Residential areas can be a real double-edged sword. Then again, if you position yourself next to too many other bars, you’ll have boozy loud boys in all the time, which is not good either.’
‘Think about the competition in the area. Make sure you’re vastly different.’

The Maven
1st Floor, 1 Call Lane, Leeds, LS1 7BT

The Maven, which opened in September this year, is the brainchild of Claudio Antonino, ex-bar manager at Harvey Nichols, Leeds. Though he’s opened many a bar in the past, it’s the first bar he can call his own, so to him concept was key – his vision was for an intimate, speakeasy-style bar which he claims are a rarity in Leeds.
Bartenders are kitted out in 1900s attire, and following the era’s rituals, serve up recreations of the classics in this top-floor bar. It’s located on an appropriate street – Call Lane is not only home to a number of Leeds’ mixology mainstays like Jake’s Bar & Grill; it is also one of Leeds’ oldest streets and even has an illegal brothel down the road. A pre-Prohibition bar seems to fit right in.
‘I’d been looking at places for about three years,’ says Antonino. ‘I really wanted to find the perfect venue for a very specific idea I had. To me, Leeds is a blast because there are so many bars per square mile. But everyone knows everyone else, so it can quickly get really boozy and raucous.
‘I wanted a place that brought back manners and drinking decorum. Don’t get me wrong: later at night the music goes up and everyone lets their hair down – it’s not a boring bar – but I wanted a place where people could have a conversation and an excellent classic cocktail. There are many much louder bars around and we stand out for just that reason.’

Antonino’s top tips:

‘Know what you want out of your bar and know yourself before you even start looking for places.’
‘Research the town. Know how the city works. Where do people live and work? Who else is on the street? What’s your customer demographic? Local knowledge is vital: there have been lots of London-based bar operators who decided to open Leeds branches and flopped because they didn’t know the area.’
‘Follow what I like to call ‘the Burger King theory’. Wherever there’s a McDonalds, a Burger King opens up close to it and goes on to offer better quality food and better service for a slightly higher price. It’s a good idea to do the same with bars – and no, before you ask, I’m not doing the PR for Burger King.’

The Liars Club
19a Back Bridge Street, Manchester M3 2PB (underneath Mojo)

The name of this bar, which opened in October this year, tells you just what owners Lyndon Higginson (of Keko Moku fame) and Jobe Ferguson and Ross Mackenzie (of Northern Quarter hangout Black Dog Ballroom) had in mind when they decided to open a bar.
‘You know when you tell yourself you’re not out for a big night and you just want a couple of drinks, but the next thing you know it’s 4am and you’re in a whirlwind of shots? Yeah, if you lie to yourself like that a lot, then you’re already a member of The Liars Club,’ says Higginson.
Clearly this bar is aimed at members of the drinks industry and their mates as much as it is at like-minded punters from other trades. ‘After our bar shifts we all used to go on to Mojo, because it was open late. Then Black Dog opened and we all started going there. We want to bring people back to this part of Manchester with The Liars Club.’
Ferguson, Higginson and Mackenzie have a novel concept to keep punters in their bars long after they start kidding themselves they’re calling it a night. Over 100 rums grace the backbar, and each can be ordered by the bottle, half-bottle or quart to be shared at the table.
‘For the most part, the only venues that give you by-the-bottle drinks are twattish clubs, and all you can buy is overpriced crap. We have 120 different rums to choose from, we price them fairly so you’re more likely to enjoy yourself for longer, and there’s something for everyone. You can buy something relatively inexpensive or go nuts with El Dorado 25-year-old if you want – wouldn’t it be great if everyone did?’
The rough-and-ready look of the venue is part of its raison d’être – it’s meant to feel like home (especially if your home happens to be a Caribbean rum shack – and don’t we all wish it was?). ‘We open at 5pm for the suits working around the Spinningfields area, but we stay open till 4am for all the bartender wreck-heads who’ll rock up past midnight and stay
and stay and stay…’

Higginson’s top tips:

‘It’s crucial to establish a good relationship with the other bars in the area. You don’t want them to feel a bad competitive vibe because, after all, they’ll probably give you most of your customers, one way or another.’
‘Make sure that concept and venue go perfectly together.’
‘Budget, budget, budget! It’s incredibly easy to get carried away and go nuts over a place you definitely can’t afford.’

Editorial feature from Imbibe Magazine – November/December 2011