Post mortem

I’m writing this bit last because I didn’t know how to introduce a ‘why I’ve failed’ post. But I have to say I’ve really bloody enjoyed writing it. And I still don’t think the category is bound for failure. I think having gone over this list of all the areas we faced challenges, there’s absolutely no surprise we were forced to close. But if we hadn’t opened, would these things have been found out? I mean some are self evident and schoolboy errors on my enthusiastic part. But for the rest. I think in order for a more sensible attitude to socialising to be achieved, we do need to push these envelopes. We have to be challenging the status quo constantly; offering different options and learning from what doesn’t work. So I hope that by publishing this, there may be some in category learning and we can begin to hone what conscious consumption looks like in the hospitality sphere.

Here’s where I think we failed/fell short/missed an opportunity for success.

Location

Blind naivety led me to start a business in a city I barely knew. That’s something I would definitely never do again. I think there are probably some uniquenesses to Liverpool which don’t exist elsewhere but more broadly I’ve learned that cities are all so different that you really need a lot of research before venturing into a new one. I hesitate to add in ‘duh’ to the end of this.

In relation to this, being an hour away from home had other challenges including not having access to my usual contact base and not have a good understanding of the infrastructure in place but also not being able to persuade my musical mates to do gigs/persuade groups of mates down on a quiet night/have mates sing your praises to their mates/talk about it to others when I’m out and about/so many more small measures along those lines. They’re easy to overlook but are pretty important in the first halting steps of a new business.

Card only

Related to this is that I was pretty keen on being card only due to previous experiences with allowing cash to run through the business. Liverpool is very much a cash economy.

The Family

Again, related to the location, it feels like there’s a tight ‘family’ within the city who may or may not be receptive to people from outside starting businesses.

Distance

An hour either way. There were good sides in that it was possible to separate myself out where hospitality can be a bit all consuming. There were also a number of bad sides like having to take a cocktail off the menu when a member of staff develops a simple to fix issue with it.

Public Sector

I don’t mind being pretty public about just how frustrating it was trying to work with the local authority on this. I went to a number of lip service meetings with a number of people being paid good money to deal with trying to limit harmful drinking attitudes and couldn’t quite believe the lack of uptake of ideas or solutions. It just isn’t good enough, frankly. I hesitate to refer to this as simple laziness but it’s a little hard to see it as anything else.

Private Sector

Again, a limiting factor of being so far away and potentially so very pregnant were the difficulties getting in front of big city based private sector companies who could partner with us. For anyone else considering this I think it’s a huge opportunity. It is in the company’s interest to encourage its employees to continue to socialise and reduce the social association with alcohol on so many levels from wellbeing through inclusivity and to prevention of anti-social behaviour. We’ve seen this in the news recently around liabilities for behaviour at work Christmas parties.

If I were to do it again I would be knocking hard on the doors of businesses and getting them to partner with us on a subscription basis where a subscription gives:

• a discount

• the ability to use various resources around what to do at internal socials (to give them greater due diligence)

• access to team building opportunities

• one night a month for hosted after work drinks in the space

Shelf stability

The elephant in the room for the industry, I’m convinced. Sorry to be blunt if you’re an alcohol free producer reading this but most of the shelf lives simply weren’t up to spec. I think there’s some knowledge of this which is glossed over by those trying to push the category but there are also not that many people with big inventories kicking around to test the BBE claims. Probably some of it relates to working with small boutique brands who simply can’t obtain the same product consistency as the big guys but I definitely think we could all do with being a lot more open about how if it’s not got booze in it and you’re also trying to cut down on nasties, it simply won’t last.

The two drink conundrum

Another elephant in the room which I’ve talked about a lot. Alcohol is moreish. WE’ve probably all experienced the pull of the ‘just one drink’ turning into a night out. If you’re not drinking alcohol you’re unlikely to want to put away the same volume of product as you would if you were. Thus the basic business model of a pub falls down.

Membership

An opportunity related to the above. In fact an alcohol free bar feels more like a movement than a simple space and thus it might have been more successful to structure it monetarily more along the lines of a gym or members’ club. This would have been my next move had we carried on.

Destination venue vs piggy back

At a conference at the start of the year I spoke to a guy achieving success in Ghana who had chosen a location destination as opposed to inner city. I went inner city assuming groups would drop in for maybe one drink to satisfy their none drinkers but in fact it felt like people came for the evenings. Obviously there are fantastic savings to be made if you move out of town.

Sober vs sober curious

I am sober curious in that I still drink alcohol. I also think that’s the way the alcohol free movement is going. As such I chose to open a space that did have a small amount of alcoholic drinks. This had its benefits in that on a Saturday night we could have the odd couple in for a glass of wine while pushing the ‘not full of piss heads’ alternative. However, it definitely had its costs, most specifically around not receiving the support of those in recovery who were running groups or acting as influencers. This is obviously totally understandable and to be honest revealed a lot I had been very naive about with alcohol addiction but it also meant that the people who shout the loudest very much weren’t shouting about us.

For anyone looking to open this is a bit of a kettle of worms. Some people don’t want anything that emulates alcohol, some don’t want anything with a stimulant. It needs careful thinking about, obviously I guess.

Food

We chose a space with a kitchen because I think food is a really important addition to an initiative like this. None of our food installations worked out for one reason or another. This was pretty detrimental.

The baby

A tale that’s not quite as old as time but equally doesn’t need too much more elucidating. I found out I was pregnant on agreeing the lease and had the baby 5 months into trading. There’s just a myriad of things to struggle with there. A prominent alcohol free events producer actually declined to work with us due to my need to structure our events around maternity leave. And once the baby was here I was pretty stuck. All this rights and legislations go out of the window once you’re the one at the helm and unfortunately

Staff training

Since this is a new category, the staff would have needed to be trained right from the ground up to understand all the nuances around the area/the category/the demographic/the drinks. We simply didn’t have that sort of budget. The team that I worked with were fantastic, often went over and above and were so lovely to have on board but I just didn’t have the resource to train them in the ways they needed and deserved.

Functional drinks

A huge area of opportunity as far as I’m concerned. To be completely honest this was a sub category I’d never even come across before starting the bar but it soon became clear that almost everyone is looking for the drink that can give them that one drink feeling without the hangover. I don’t know how this will develop but it’s definitely fascinating.

Products

Another area of opportunity. If I were to do this again I would take most of the drink production in house, alchemy style. It would allow me to have greater control over shelf lives but also enable greater access to the functional attributes of some of the drinks. What’s more I could work in some of the probiotic elements of home ferments, creating really healthy drinks that taste great. I’ve always been fascinated about hospitality and the often overlooked elements of beer drinking that force people off their sofas and into pubs, thus feeding that huge industry. Serving just doesn’t have the same opportunity for theatre and better quality product than you can get at home. Now, an alcohol free apothecary that can give you a spring in your step while improving your gut microbiome and still leave you with a grid worthy image of you looking glam next to something fabulous in a glass, that is a really interesting prospect.

Bar/retail/wholesale

I shouted loudly recently about how fabulous the alcohol free bar in Birmingham is. One of the reasons for this is the dark/sexy/night out atmosphere. I chose to maximise sale opportunities and flexibility by including a bottle shop. I think this was a good risk-cautious approach. However, it did detract from the ability to create a real sense of bar character.

Demographic

If you are the only alcohol free bar you have to be all things to all people. That’s hard.

Stigma

I’m still not sure quite how detrimental this was. Do people just not really want to be seen in an alcohol free space because they’ll either be seen as boring or an alcoholic? I don’t know. Could be a killer. Certainly I think its a failure in marketing because were I to name the category better/sooner I could have got rid of some of those negative associations.

Finally, my apologies. My baby is due back from his hour long music class with his grandparents so I’m just going to press publish without proofreading for fear this will never get posted otherwise. Equally I’m sorry for the length of the piece/its scribbly nature. I think I mentioned/time poverty.

Hope this helps someone make a success of a truly interesting industry.