Client: Poppleston Allen Solicitors 

Project: Nottingham NightMix Study 

What were MAKE asked to do?

We were asked by leading licensing solicitors, Poppleston Allen, to provide one of our NightMix reports of the city’s evening and night-time economy. The objective was to understand if the city still really needed its licensing cumulative impact policy as there was a concern that the policy this was stifling innovation in Nottingham’s nightlife. 

How did MAKE do it?

• We produced a profile of the city’s evening and night-time economy using our own NightMix data. This segmented the city’s economy down into key after dark subsectors such as food, drink, entertainment. In turn we broke these down further into our categories of niche nightlife segments. We then measured these historically over a decade of performance.

• We identified that while the city had hugely grown its restaurant sector (which was positive), this was at the expense of innovation in bars and late night music venues.

• Our analysis showed a decline in the latter, and while some of these venues were closed by the authorities because of poor management, there had been virtually no new openings or investment in the pub and bar sector in years. This provided evidence for concerns locally that good operators with an innovative offer (i.e. one that wasn’t simply about selling cheap alcohol) weren’t welcome in the city.  

What happened next?

Local stakeholders who cared about the city’s nightlife used our evidence to support a case that the city should be more welcoming of applications for city centre licences (providing they are from high quality operators with an exceptional proposition that doesn’t add to the problems the city faces after dark). Recently, there have been openings, e.g. Brewdog that mean the city isn’t falling behind its competitors.

What unique value did MAKE bring to this project?

With our NightMix model we mapped the city’s nightlife for the first time and provided a benchmark for future development after dark.