‘If it doesn’t work, I can say I tried something,” shrugs Chris Hindle. We are sat in XLR, his 200-capacity club in Manchester’s student-filled Withington suburb, discussing the figurative anvil dangling over club culture.
The Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) recently reported that the UK has lost three venues a week in the past three months, seven in 10 venues are failing to make a profit and a quarter of towns and cities that had nightclubs in 2020 now have none.
“Alcohol duties are going up, bills are going up, yet drinking habits and attendances have dropped,” he says. Luckily, he’s got a plan – one potentially crazy enough to work.
XLR is trialling a new BYOB (“bring your own booze”) model. Ticket-buyers arrive with pre-bought drinks: XLR advise a limit of eight cans or one 75cl bottle of spirit per person, with no glass allowed inside. After a security check, they take them to the bar staff. Behind the bar, there are numbered wooden shelves resembling the shoe cupboards at a bowling alley. Your drinks go in one for £2, the number goes on your hand, and when you want one you ask the staff to hand it over. There is also a working bar, if you’d rather buy a cold beer.
“Some clubs are charging £5 for a ticket, you get to the bar and it’s £12 for a double,” says Hindle, meaning cash-strapped students will stay in or pre-drink heavily to spend less later. By raising ticket prices to £10-£15 but allowing BYOB, he aims to incentivise students to come out, knowing they can then drink at supermarket prices.
Legally, it’s a straightforward situation. XLR needs a premises licence to sell alcohol and host regulated entertainment, along with a personal licence held by a designated premises supervisor. To also allow BYOB, Hindle doesn’t require extra licensing – he simply needs to show he is continuing to uphold the standards of the licensing he already has. While there are members’ clubs requiring club premises certificates, and BYOB events that supply alcohol under temporary event notices, XLR seems to be Manchester’s first licensed club which is also BYOB – and I can’t find a similar model elsewhere.
I go to the opening night at 11:30pm, with two cans of lager, one 20cl glass bottle of rum (I’m given a resealable water pouch at security to decant it into) and a bottle of Coca-Cola. I get my cupboard and ask for the rum and Coke. XLR are currently having punters mix their own drinks, using stacks of plastic shot glasses and cups on the bar, but Hindle says this is under review. Tonight is going well. Its reduced capacity of 120 is already nearly sold out at an average of £12 per ticket, and everyone seems to get it.
“I think it’s really good,” says Amelie, who brought with her a small rum, pineapple juice and a knock-off BuzzBallz. “Drinks can be really expensive when you go out to clubs, so ramping up the ticket price a little but allowing you to bring your own drinks does save money.”
“You never go to a house party and they supply the drinks,” notes Ted, who brought seven lagers to XLR. He also notes the lack of necessity to pre-drink: “Now you can show up to the event whenever you want and enjoy the whole night.” Daisy, who brought “squashka” (squash, water, vodka), recalls friends pre-drinking too hard ahead of previous nights out at conventional clubs, then getting denied entry for being too far gone.
She makes a good point – I’ve not seen anyone wasted yet. “The people I’ve seen today have been a lot less intoxicated, more interesting in conversation,” Josh says, “because they haven’t pushed themselves too hard before they got here.”
Another concern that XLR’s new policy may help to mitigate is drink-spiking: CounterSpike, a company producing drink testing strips, has reported a five-fold increase in the UK since 2020.
Hindle, whose club contains 17 CCTV cameras, considered this with his staffed cupboards, and punters seem to feel safe. “People know they can bring their drinks in, screw their own lids on and you own your own drinks,” Amelie says. “You know what’s in them.”
One currently unanswered question is what to do with the night’s leftover booze, which punters can’t take home due to licensing restrictions. For now, it will sit in storage.
Outside, Hindle is beaming. “Nobody’s brought anything too stupid, nobody’s turned up with a full crate. It’s going really well.”
I leave feeling as if I’ve watched the student night-life equivalent of the fosbury flop: a stunning innovation that seems primed to become the new norm. I can picture these in loads of student areas – and am a bit jealous of the kids who might go.
