Adrianna Tan
If your business model can’t work without booze, and your customers aren’t interested in booze anymore, you can come up with new ways of attracting them instead of hoping they’ll drink more.
Like I’ve been saying, drinking is deeply uncool among younger people now.
Adrianna Tan
@nitinkhanna also they don't have money
Nitin Khanna
@skinnylatte I was wondering why that is - why does Gen Z not drink. One line in the article points it out - "they didn't learn how to party" :thaenkin:
Adrianna Tan
@vfrmedia @brennen it's a global thing as far as i can tell.
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK
@brennen @skinnylatte its also happening across the pond - I live in a provincial town rather than a big city and am Gen X (and a former heavy drinker and partydrugs user) but don't go out to many events these days.
in UK is successive govts have (understandably) clamped down harder on DUI (including both alcohol and more recently partydrugs) - getting to/from venues in many towns/cities (particularly outside London/Manchester/Leeds) often involves driving.
A lot of venues/events were dependent on the cops turning a blind eye to DUI especially amongst white/middle class folk, which is now no longer the case (there are even midweek controls to catch out folk who took partydrugs at weekend and still have metabolites in their bloodstream, even if their driving isn't impaired)
brennen
@skinnylatte people have been complaining about the problems of the take being on the booze for way longer than i've been alive, and they're right - but i do think it's a hard problem.
like a lot of the small places we go to music, people might not bat an eye at a hundred dollar bar tab for a couple people, and they probably tip well, but basically no one is going to pay fifty bucks a head for a ticket or cover charge, and i'm not sure where else you make up the $.
Adrianna Tan
@timrichards it’s cheaper than Aus / SG. But the bigger problem is that service workers can’t afford to live here and they can’t go to these places after work. It all comes down to housing too
Tim Richards
@skinnylatte interesting read. Has alcohol become really expensive in San Francisco? Because it is really expensive here, partly because of taxes. I can understand young people not being able to afford it. And the soft drink options are always uninspiring.
ClickyMcTicker
@skinnylatte “There was a three-year period during COVID that people my age didn’t learn how to party,” Velasquez said.
This is the key.
San Francisco is an interesting outlier with the skyrocketing home prices and partially burst tech bubble (WFH), but the lost time during Covid is what fundamentally changed the market on a grand scale.
There’s three distinct generations that were formed by Covid:
The first was the one which had reached college and would have been partying had they not been in lockdown. They were 18-20 when the lockdowns started, and were at home for their 21st birthday. By the time the restrictions lifted, they had still never set foot in a bar and had little more than curiosity about them.
The second group was in high school during the Covid lockdowns. They graduated and went to college, but turned 21 after the restrictions had already lifted. They were influenced by the generation before them, which means they had no older friends in college encouraging them to come to a bar with them.
The final group is those who were 21-24ish when the lockdown started. They had gone to college and lived the typical experience (underage drinking at parties). They had reached 21 and started going to bars. They enjoyed themselves before the lockdowns happened. By the time the lockdowns were lifted, they had been saving up to let loose - only to find that a large chunk of the bars they used to frequent had closed down.
2021-2022 had some of the highest sales on record for a number of bars in my area. After about six months, people learned how to behave again. Numbers started dropping back to normal before slumping as the younger generation began to trickle in.
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