CLIENT: Best BAr None
PROJECT: Town Centre Night-Time Economy Toolkit
What were MAKE asked to do?
“If you can’t measure you can’t manage”. Yes it’s a business speak cliché, but it’s a cliché because it’s true. Best Bar None is the scheme for driving up standards in UK (and now international) pubs, bars, clubs and other licensed venues. The scheme, backed by government and industry, seeks to create a better customer experience, improve the bottom of line of venues and, crucially, reduce crime and disorder in the town centres and neighbourhoods where it operates.
However, while there is strong anecdotal evidence that in most locations it is playing a key role in reducing problems, there has been little attempt to quantify that change. Best Bar None asked MAKE to devise a simple introductory toolkit that could be used by local Best Bar None coordinators to source data that could demonstrate their progress on improving their town centre at night.
How did MAKE do it?
We drew on our knowledge of the available evidence in areas such as crime and disorder, accident and emergency admissions, customer satisfaction, town centre user studies and measuring the economics of the licensed economy to identify where BBN staff could find reliable data.
Crucial was keeping the process simple, due to resource and sometimes expertise limitations of Best Bar Bone coordinators, but while giving them a first step on the ladder to better evidencing their scheme’s positive impact on the local night time economy.
What happened next?
Best Bar None produced the toolkit and sent this out to its 100+ members. Currently MAKE are working with Birmingham to help them capture the economic performance data of their night-time economy and its change since they introduced the scheme.
What unique value did MAKE bring to this project?
This is the first time an approach to measuring change in the night-time economy has been developed for distribution on a such a national scale. It is envisaged that the data produced locally can subsequently be harnessed as part of a national evaluation.