The changing face of wet-led pubs

Reports of the death of the traditional drinking pub have been greatly exaggerated, judging by the levels of trading across the category that shows a relatively healthy trend, as drinkers are increasingly choosing the pub rather than late-night venues including nightclubs and bars.

?

Wet-led pubs have enjoyed a 10% increase in like-for-like sales on a year-on-year basis, according to CGA, which has helped them almost match inflation since 2019 – something of a notable achievement. In contrast, it has been a bit of an ongoing bloodbath for the late-night category, with CGA revealing that 49% of operators have experienced a decline in footfall as people switch to drinking in pubs – especially Generation Z drinkers, who are the mainstay of late-night activity.?

Between 2022 and 2024, the percentage of the Generation Z cohort frequenting drinking pubs for their “high-tempo occasions” (whatever they are) has increased from 13% to 17%, while for nightclubs, it has fallen from 32% to 27%, and bars have retreated from 27% to 23%.?

Undoubtedly, a chunk of them have been tempted into the growing category of theme bars, which seek to offer more than just another drink in non-differentiated surroundings. Such things are hardly new and have appeared intermittently over the years. We’ve had the Eerie Pub Company, the Frankenstein bars in Scotland, and some of the weaker Irish bars also fall into the theme category.

More recently, we have Inception Group’s growing chain of Mr Fogg’s bars and its new theme, Cahoots, which includes the Ticket Hall Boozer, and which will soon be joined by the Postal Office. As its nightclubs come under pressure, Neos Hospitality has also announced two new themed concepts – Bonnie Rogue’s Pub and Barbara’s Bier Haus.

Some of these will undoubtedly fall into the flavour of the month, year, or some other timeframe as they ultimately fall out of favour with their target audience. Having a defined target customer differentiates these concepts from the traditional wet-led pub that favours an all-welcome policy.?

This is, without doubt, their overarching beauty, and Oisin Rogers, of The Devonshire, speaking at the recent Casual Dining Show, very much agreed: “Good pubs have a massive mix of people…and should be inclusive of race, religion, age and [welcome] all elements of the population. Really classic old pubs will be more embracing. They target everybody.”

He says the pub companies – including Stonegate, Mitchells & Butlers, Young’s and Fuller’s – build their pubs around the idea of their best customer, and this can be a mistake as they then run the risk of shutting out a potential broader audience. Even the mighty JD Wetherspoon is cited by Rogers as effectively only aiming to appeal to a specific section of the community – the value-conscious drinker that skews to the older end of the age range and is likely to be male. Maybe it should expand out beyond this established customer base, he suggested when we chatted at the show.

It might just be doing that, judging by its recent openings. The Lion & Unicorn has just opened at Waterloo station and greets customers with the wording “bar and restaurant” emblazoned on its sheet glass exterior. It has attracted a very different audience to the more established Wetherspoon pubs and draws in a broad crowd more akin to that seen at its other newer outlets, including The Captain Flinders near Euston station and The Barrel Vault at St Pancras.

Clearly, these are all train station pubs that reflect the great diversity of the travelling public, but there are undoubtedly some elements that Wetherspoon can take from these units and incorporate into future openings, and also elements it can drip-feed into its existing estate. Such moves will also mitigate against the risk of the business, operating on a burning platform of an ageing customer base.

Such accusations have been thrown at wet-led pubs as they have perennially been linked to old men’s boozers, but there are a growing number of examples of pubs that have moved on from this outdated thinking. In one camp, there are the unchanged venues whose traditional welcome-all philosophy has been embraced by a younger audience that recognises them as comforting, inclusive and, equally important, cool nowadays.

In the other camp, we have the ongoing wave of unloved pubs such as the Pelican and The Hero in west London, which have been stripped back to their Victorian architectural bones and injected with a vibrancy by their youngish new owners.?

And between these two camps, we have a growing number of drinkers realising that the wet-led pub (yes, some also do food) can offer the sense of ownership, community and diversity that late-night drinking bars, nightclubs and themed venues ultimately fail to deliver.

Glynn Davis, editor of Retail Insider?

This piece was originally published on Propel Info where Glynn Davis writes a regular Friday opinion piece. Beer Insider would like to thank Propel for allowing the reproduction of this column.

?