If You Want Better Going Out Experiences, Look for Places That Follow "The Formula"

A tried and tested method

Welcome to The Sauce, deep travels through food and drink culture written by me, Charlie Brown, founder and former owner of what was once named Britain’s best independent wine store.

The Sauce is 100% reader-supported. For $5 a month or $50 a year, you’ll get access to hundreds of recipes and an ever-increasing number of food and wine commentaries and articles, as well as discounts on my remote wine consulting service.

I’ll teach you how to cook better. How to buy better drinks. How to cope with wine culture when it threatens to overwhelm you.

Your donation keeps the oven on and the pantry stocked. Thank you.

Image courtesy of author. The perfect bar.

I can spot if a neighbourhood bar is going to succeed or fail from 20 paces.

I’m rarely wrong.

You could call it a spidey sense after a decade in wine and hospitality but it’s not just that. People think that the success or failure of bars is random when nothing could be further from the truth.

Believe it or not, when it comes to neighbourhood bars at least, there is a formula.

A formula that too few bar owners are prepared to follow, even though it works.

I used it in my bar. My bar-owning friends — the thriving ones — use it in theirs.

Once you know it, you’ll level up your eating and drinking experiences so much, you’ll wonder what the heck you were playing at before.

Meet the perfect neighbourhood bar

There is a bar in my home of Porto, Portugal — the one in this article’s title image — that is near to perfect. It also happens to be a three-minute walk from my house.

The bar is the epitome of The Formula:

• Always have a good value beer for the millionth person that walks in every single day asking for one (this is especially true in continental Europe where beer is drunk like water).

• Offer 5–10 wines by the glass that DON’T SUCK. Do not overcharge.

• If you have to deal with spirits, have a small but quality-focused back bar.

• Offer a good, inventive menu that’s easy to prepare. Cheese, charcuterie, olives, hummous, etc. Or outsource the food offering to a popup kitchen. Collaboration is community.

• Keep it casual. Friendly. Community focused.

In my local bar’s case, they implement The Formula like this:

• One tap of the local lager. Priced the same as every other non-touristy bar in Porto.

• A rotating list of 10 or 12 wines by the glass, liberally poured for a good price.

• A few easily-made cocktails like Negronis and Aperol Spritz.

• Non-fancy snacks like olives and lupins (the most common bar snack in Portugal) as well as a fancier but still accessible menu of snacks from the popup kitchen next door available at weekends.

• Open until 1 am every day, quick and efficient counter service, and a screen showing different videographer’s work every few weeks.

The most interesting thing about this bar is that I also knew it in its previous iteration as a sparkling wine bar. This place did not implement The Formula. It was expensive, it wasn’t casual, and its wines weren’t very good.

It was dead every time I walked past. Eventually, it died for good.

But not this new iteration. This is full every single night.

I’ve seen The Formula work countless times. But many bar owners are terrified of it. They’re nervous that if they elevate their offering even just a little bit, they’ll scare off price-conscious customers. They think there’s no money in quality. Far too many bars work on a stack ’em high, sell ’em overpriced model.

Which means y’all are stuck with mediocre experiences you would soon forget if they hadn’t ravaged your wallet for $100+.

What these owners don’t understand is that the bars that stick to The Formula are the future of casual hospitality.

And once more people know about it, they can no longer get away with ripping you off.

Don’t let your local bars get away with ripping you off

If you ask a bar owner why they charge you so much for drinks or snacks, I would bet my bottom Euro that they would cite the usual.

The price of alcohol is too high. Commercial rents are extortionate. They can’t afford or find staff. That’s why they have to charge you so much for your mediocre glass of wine with sloppy service.

There are some nuggets of truth in that. But it’s not the whole story about why places fail.

They fail because they don’t care enough. They focus on the wrong things. They don’t stick to The Formula.

Because I’ve seen enough quality-focused — Formula-based — bars thrive, even in the most expensive of cities.

A friend of mine owns a pub in a bougie area of North London. It’s a comforting place (for a Brit at least) because it has all the elements of a local pub. A nice beer selection, a great pub menu, wine and a few spirits.

But he sticks to The Formula. This means yes you can get a lager, but you can also get a craft beer or two. His wines — even the house pours — are fantastic. His pub menu is a level up from most.

And he is hardly any more expensive, if at all.

Here’s a comparison between my friend’s pub and a few lesser-quality establishments. To make it harder, I chose a few pubs outside London where commercial rents are lower:

Image courtesy of author

The prices are similar and yet my friend’s wines and beers are far better than the ones at their competitors’. We’re talking oceans apart.

In terms of my Porto bar, these are their prices compared to the place next door:

Image courtesy of author

Guess which one is busier. Guess which one has better booze and food. Guess which one has a higher Google rating.

Guess which one I go to three nights a week.

At the heart of The Formula is a balance between giving people what they want and giving them quality. It’s a balance that my favourite bars in the world — like my friend’s pub or my local bar here in Porto — get exactly right. They’re not gunning for fancy but they give enough of a shit about their customers to source great booze, snacks and atmosphere.

They have a purpose that goes beyond making money for the owner.

They know how to pick wines and beers that are good quality and good value (it’s actually not that hard if you get the right distributor, which is why I’m surprised so few places do it).

They focus on what matters. Good experiences. Quality. No gimmicks, no rip-off pricing.

From what I’ve seen during my decade in the hospitality trade, both at home in the UK and abroad, these are the places that are making it work.

Just ask my neighbourhood bar.

Oh, you can’t. The staff are too busy serving hordes of people to answer your question.

---

---

How to find The Formula-based establishments for yourself

Alas, this isn’t something you can Google.

You need to use your eyes. If you walk past somewhere you think “that looks cool”, snatch a glance at the menu. Spy on what’s on people’s plates or in their glasses.

Who’s using the establishment? Rowdy bachelor parties might not scream this is my place. Chilled-out humans are more the vibe.

You probably already know a few places already. They’ve probably flashed up in your mind whilst reading this article. Go to them. Ask the staff where they eat and drink. Follow the chain of recommendations.

Don’t look at what a place looks like, look at what it does. Otherwise, you might find yourself in an Instagram-worthy but cynical establishment. The sort that litter the hospitality landscape more than I like to see.

Trust yourself. In my experience, first instincts are often right.

---

The Formula isn’t really a formula. It’s just indicative of a joint that cares. That’s focused. That doesn’t pay staff peanuts and markup food and wine 5x just so the owner can swan about in their Mercedes, seemingly oblivious that we all did basic math at school and can figure out where the money comes from (and how much they’re overcharging).

These are the joints that survive. Thrive. And are fun to visit.

Millennials and Gen Z are about to take the reins of the world. Their insatiable thirst (pun intended) for quality means establishments will have to up their game if they want to survive.

It’s not hard. Elevate your offering just a smidgen above the bottom floor and you’re already ahead of 90% of the pack.

As for the rest of us, we can get on with enjoying an evening out, safe in the knowledge we’re not being ripped off whilst having a fun, easy, relaxed time.

Now there’s a thought.

---

🍻 AND THAT’S ALL SHE WROTE. If you want more, check out the The Sauce archive.

🍻 IF YOU’RE NOT FOLLOWING ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA, that’s because I suck at it. But you can still follow me and see my sporadic Instagram posts here about life, wine, food, and general shenanigans here.

🍻 DO YOU WINE? If you do but struggle to know what to buy in your local area, I can help. SommAnywhere is my personalised wine recommendation service based on 10+ years in the wine trade. You fill out a quick quiz, I’ll tell you exactly what you should be buying and from where. Discounts for paid subscribers to The Sauce are available.

🍻 FINALLY, sharing The Sauce helps get the word out about what we’re doing here. If you’re picking up what I’m putting down, I’d love it if you would share The Sauce with friends and family. Just click the big blue button ⬇️