How Trend-Chasing Will Gut Your Bar and Leave the Carcass Instagrammable

Every few months, the bar world gets another bloated prophecy. A puffed-up “industry insights” piece declares the arrival of the next seismic shift in hospitality: tech-forward menus, low-ABV “experiences,” foraged garnishes, cocktails that fog, spin, and change color to match your aura. It’s not evolution. It’s full-blown identity crisis in artisanal packaging.

And like clockwork, bars scramble. They gut their menus, order glassware that looks like something salvaged from an alien shipwreck, and rebrand with the dead-eyed enthusiasm of a hostage reading cue cards. Because staying relevant, apparently, is worth bleeding your personality dry.

Let’s start with the holy grail of modern bar buzz: sustainability. Yeah, it matters. Of course it matters. But too many venues use it like a filter—not to clean anything up, just to make things look better. Slap a “zero-waste” sticker on your menu, serve dehydrated citrus husks and carrot tops in a coupe, and pretend you’re saving the world one overpriced garnish at a time. Behind the scenes? You’re still binning produce like it insulted your mother. Sustainability isn’t a vibe. It’s work. Quiet, constant work. Not something you build a brand around like it’s the latest single from a pop star who just discovered activism.

And the low- and no-ABV gold rush—sure, we need options for people who want to socialize without pickling their liver. But somewhere along the way, bars mistook sobriety for spectacle. Now you’ve got drinks that promise “mindful elevation” and deliver the flavor profile of a melted candle rolled in forest floor. No one wants to pay ten quid to drink regret through a sprig of thyme. If your zero-proof menu tastes like scented disappointment, no amount of “craft” is going to save you.

Let’s not forget the glorious future of “seamless” service. Which, in most cases, means stripping out the humanity and replacing it with a tablet and a Bluetooth speaker playing corporate jazz. You walk into a place, and there’s no bartender—just someone behind a counter swiping left on life. You order from an app. The app asks if you want to tip 25% for your own labor. The drink arrives, maybe. Maybe it texts you instead. Hospitality used to be about presence. Eye contact. Knowing when someone wants to talk or be left alone. Now? It’s customer service by way of chatbot. You didn’t build a bar—you built a vending machine with ambient lighting.

And the menus—Jesus Christ, the menus. Every page is a manifesto. Local this, global that, fermented goji dust from a rooftop garden in Copenhagen. You’re not creating flavor—you’re assembling trend pieces like a sadistic BuzzFeed test. Half the dishes are built by committee, the other half by panic. Nobody eats it because they’re hungry. They eat it because it photographs well. And don’t even start with the “global flavors enhanced by local sourcing.” That’s not innovation. That’s marketing camouflage. A Spanish tapas plate drizzled with West Country cider reduction doesn’t make you progressive. It makes you predictable.

Then there’s the late-night revival, branded like some revolutionary act. What are we doing, exactly? Staying open past 10? Putting on a DJ with a man bun and a vinyl crate full of irony? That’s not reviving the night. That’s clinging to it with the same desperation as a washed-up lounge singer playing their one hit on repeat. The night doesn’t need reviving. It needs bars with balls—places that feed chaos, flirtation, the sacred mess of strangers bonding over shared mistakes. You don’t need a concept. You need guts.

And finally, the experiential cocktail revolution. The drinks that fog and sparkle, change color, come with headphones and an origin story. Half of them taste like licking the inside of an aromatherapy diffuser. Cocktails that look like modern art installations—like tonguing the waxy rim of a scented candle in the VIP toilet of a bankrupt wellness startup, while a Bluetooth speaker plays lo-fi jazz over the sound of silent desperation. It’s theater. And bad theater, at that. Because when the smoke clears and the glitter settles, what’s left? A drink that’s forgotten before the glass hits the bar.

Look—curiosity is sacred. Try things. Explore. Push. But don’t mistake trend-chasing for vision. The bars that survive—the ones that matter—aren’t the ones chasing hashtags. They’re the ones doing something that feels undeniably them. Real places. Rough edges. Full heart. No gimmicks.

Don’t be afraid of new ideas. But for the love of god, don’t be a sheep.

You’re running a bar, not a theme park for bored influencers. Act like it.