Play at Drinking
Experiential venues and the rise of ‘kidulting’
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Is just popping out for a simple pint no longer enough? With a growing number of experiential bars opening – with ever crazier themes – versus record pub closures, it seems the people have spoken. And no, no it isn’t. From ball pits to witch’s workshops, what unites this wacky list of new drinking venues? One word – ‘kidulting’.
Not so long ago, an invite popped up in our inbox for Bubble Planet. It offered ‘an escape into the whimsical world of bubbles’, complete with bubble-themed food and drinks. The new London-based venue has 11 bubble-themed rooms, including several giant ball pits. You could “take a dip in an ocean of living balloons”, whatever that means. Or you could “feel miniscule in a huge bath ball pit”. The aim? To “encourage guests to release their inner child in a fun-filled world of bubbles”.
Play nicely
Bubble Planet is the latest in a fast-growing sector of what are best described as experiential play spots for adults. Combining a unique experience with high-quality food and drinks, they’re also ideal backdrops for Instagram posts and they’re not cheap.
Though incomes are squeezed in this troubled economy, consumers are spending big on entry to themed spaces, and further on themed food and drink once there. From axe-throwing and crazy golf, to Breaking Bad-themed bars with steaming blue cocktails served in lab flasks within a janky RV, a new type of on-trade venue has emerged, right across the UK.
Something for everybody
There’s the less-immersive sport or activity bars, or themed venues with an experiential element. Flight Club has elevated pub darts through spaces that are part fun fair, part private members club in décor, and promise “unexpected, ridiculous joy”. Clays is a virtual clay pigeon shooting bar where you can “take a shot at a new experience”. At NQ64 arcade bars, a neon, retro world of old consoles and vintage arcade machines await. Or at Archer Street cocktail bar, live West End-style entertainment simply, seemingly spontaneously, keeps popping up.
Then there’s the fully immersive play space. At the Cauldron, there’s wands, wizards and spells. Instead of a cocktail class, it offers ‘potion making’. Which is the same thing. At the Moonshine Saloon, the wild west comes to Chelsea’s King’s Road. Customers are kitted out in cowboy gear including a Stetson before they’re allowed to rub shoulders with ‘outlaws’, imbibe illicit drinks, or play cards. Head to the 1940s at Cahoots, a blitz bar in a disused underground station. Or escape from Alcatraz, a prison-themed bar where donned in an orange jumpsuit, you need to smuggle your liquor past the warden. What a weird world we live in. Suffice to say, there’s a space for every interest.
Seasonal escapism
And now there’s a space for every season too. London’s Neverland transforms with the seasons from hot beach club to cosy mountain lodge, to cherry blossom-filled meadow. And speaking of spaces, it was only a matter of time before the ‘Escape Room’ trend added a bar and a few cocktail options. Avora aims to bring cocktail-making ‘to life’ as you follow actors around different spaces, searching for the ingredients to make your three price-included cocktails. Again, there’s a boiler suit. We’re not sure why.
Dismiss them as gimmicky if you want, but there’s now signs that even among the bar-trade’s elite operators, a new sense of fun, immersion, and discovery is creeping into new launches. New Soho bar Dram has been created by Chris Tanner, Martyn Simpson, and Jack Wallis, formerly of Silverleaf and Milroy’s of Soho among others. It offers three floors of immersive spaces, from a basement drinks lab to a cocktail vending machine, pool room, dedicated coffee and kegged cocktail space, and spritz terrace. And though serving highly regarded, well-crafted cocktails, it has been conceived to make the high-end cocktail bar less stuffy, more playful, more ‘experiential’.
Why now?
Are consumers in this era of high-stress, and low disposable incomes, only willing to spend on something that feels like a new experience? Is it that fun is simply in high demand? Or both? It’s worth noting that escapist exoticism of the tiki bar first emerged during the Great Depression in America, and later really took off after World War II, both times when a little fun was greatly needed.
The rise of ‘kidulting’ then, of the need to blow off a little stream and escape reality through play, can be seen as a reaction to a pretty heavy few years for most people. High-pressured lives need an outlet somewhere. And for many, the traditional forum of the pub no longer fits them or their needs.
We’ll have to wait and see if the rise of experiential bars continues into – fingers crossed – better days. But for now, it’s interesting to see how their playfulness is now migrating to other drinking spaces.