The Drink Isn't the Product Any More

Here is the claim, stated plainly so it can be argued with: the thing nightlife sells is no longer primarily the drink. It is the night — the room, the sound, the reason to be there on a Saturday rather than a Tuesday, and the sense that something is happening that would not happen at home for a fifth of the price.

We think that is broadly true. We also think the strong version of it — that the drink is over and programming is everything — is not supported by the evidence in front of us, and this publication holds 26 venues’ worth of evidence. So this piece makes the argument and then tries to break it.

Why the claim is plausible before you look at Springfield

The national picture is the reason anyone raises this at all. Gallup’s consumption data has US adult drinking at the lowest level it has recorded in a trend running close to 90 years, with the sharpest fall among under-35s. If alcohol were still the product, a market drinking less would be a market going out less.

It isn’t. As we set out in more detail, the same age group going out most often is the one drinking least. Something is still being bought. It is simply not, in the main, the fourth drink.

That is a national argument, though, and national arguments are cheap. The question is whether it shows up in a mid-sized Missouri city with 26 verified venues.

Where the evidence is strongest: the top of every night

We score Thursday, Friday and Saturday on a published night rubric, in which night-specific programming is worth 25 of 100. On Saturday, the sharpest divide in the entire table is a programming divide.

Between rank 5 and rank 6, the programming score falls from 19 out of 25 to 5 — a 14-point drop in one step — and the total score falls with it, from 71 to 56. Above that line, every venue publishes a named, recurring reason to turn up on a Saturday. Below it, essentially none do. The table does not shade from one state to the other; it has a cliff in it.

Across the whole guide, the 7 venues that publish a recurring weekly programme average 76 on our overall 100-point venue rubric, against 71.4 for the 19 that publish none. That rubric is scored independently of the night rubric, so the gap is not the same measurement counted twice.

The objection we have to answer first

A rubric that awards 25 points for programming will, unsurprisingly, rank programmed venues highly. Pointing at that and calling it proof would be circular, and we are not going to do it.

So the honest test is not “do programmed venues score well on a rubric that rewards programming.” It is: does the market behave as if programming is the product? On that question the evidence is genuinely mixed, and the mixture is the finding.

The counter-evidence

19 of 26 verified venues publish no recurring weekly programme at all, and every one of them is still trading. That is the single most important fact in this piece and it cuts against the thesis. If the drink were genuinely finished as a product, a market three-quarters composed of rooms that sell an open door and a good bar would be a market in visible collapse. It is not. These are established, well-regarded venues, several of which score highly here.

Vantage Rooftop Lounge & Conservatory is the clearest case: it scores 80 out of 100 on our overall rubric, placing it near the top of the city, while sitting at the floor for night-specific programming on every night it is ranked. It sells a room rather than a schedule, and by our own measures it sells it well.

The Regency Live is stranger again. It scores 82 — high enough to place near the top of the overall ranking — and appears on no night page at all, because it publishes nothing that verifies which nights it operates. A venue can be among the best rooms in the city by our scoring and remain invisible to anyone asking the only question that matters on a Friday afternoon: are you open tonight?

Thursday is more awkward still for the argument. Martha's Vineyard leads Springfield’s overall ranking and takes third on Thursday with only 9 of 25 for Thursday programming — it wins its points on music fit, atmosphere and published information instead. Meanwhile Club Rodeo Springfield takes the night at 79 partly because it publishes its hours, its cover and its age policy while others don’t.

Which points at something the headline version of this thesis misses. Transparency is doing a lot of the work that people attribute to programming. A named weekly event is useless to a customer who cannot find out when the doors open.

The venue with the best programming does not win

The strongest single piece of evidence against “programming is everything” comes from the venue that programmes hardest.

CTRL¹ records the highest night-specific programming score anywhere in this dataset — 23 of 25 — and does not top the night. It loses on the categories that measure what a venue tells the public: it publishes no clock hours, and little about what the night costs. Under our methodology that is a real deficit and it is scored as one.

The lesson is not that programming does not matter. It is that programming is a claim, and a claim a customer cannot verify before leaving the house converts worse than a weaker claim they can.

What we actually think is happening

Not “the drink is dead.” Something narrower and more useful:

• The drink has stopped being a differentiator. It is still most of the revenue. It is no longer most of the reason. Every venue in this city can sell a cold drink at a competitive price, which is precisely why doing so competently no longer distinguishes anyone.
• The top of the market has moved and the middle has not. The programming cliff on a Saturday is a real structural feature, not a scoring artefact. The rooms competing for the biggest nights compete on production and programming. The rooms below that line compete on being good bars — and continue to succeed at it.
• Information is an underrated part of the product. Fewer than half of this market publishes opening hours. In a night economy where the decision is made in advance and on a phone, that is a product defect, not an admin oversight.
• There is no single right strategy. A neighbourhood bar that programmes nothing and knows its regulars is not failing at being a nightclub. It is doing a different job, and this publication scores it on how well it does that job.

What would change our minds

We would abandon this argument if the unprogrammed majority of the market started closing while the programmed minority grew — that would mean the shift is a replacement rather than a divergence, and we would have called the shape of it wrong. We track exactly that in openings and closures.

We would also weaken it considerably if venues began publishing programming without any corresponding change in what customers do — an announcement is not a product. We cannot currently see attendance, and we will not pretend otherwise.

What this argument rests on, and what it cannot

Everything above is drawn from 26 venues in one mid-sized city, scored on published evidence. We have no attendance figures, no revenue, no door counts and no till data, because no venue in this market publishes them and we do not model numbers we cannot check.

That is a real limit on how hard this thesis can be pushed. What we can say is what the market publishes: which rooms give a customer a specific reason to come on a specific night, and which do not. On the biggest nights, the first group is winning. Away from them, the second group is fine.