Nostalgia? No, Thanks

You know what’s funny?

You spend half your life trying to build something that feels real — a place with heartbeat, a bit of chaos, a bit of smoke and sweat and character — and then you stumble across a Reddit thread where a bunch of keyboard anthropologists are dissecting your soul like it’s a lab rat.

I did that this week. Accidentally.

Thread pops up about our upcoming purchase of Good Chemistry — a brewery I happen to love, respect, and want to see thrive — and before I can even get halfway down the comments, it’s déjà vu. The usual suspects. The nostalgia junkies. The ghosts of bars past.

“Oh, I liked it better when it was X.”

“Since those dive bar guys took over, it’s not the same.”

“The old version had vibe.”

Sure. Of course it did. So did your first girlfriend, your first car, your first pint. Everything in the past glows a little warmer under the soft light of memory. But let’s be real — nostalgia is a hell of a drug. It’ll convince you that a sticky-floored pub where you once necked Snakebite and black was “authentic” and “special,” not because it actually was, but because you were twenty-two and life hadn’t kicked your teeth in yet.

Look, I’m not naïve. Some criticism is valid. Some of it stings because it’s true.

If you can’t handle a bit of honest feedback, you’ve got no business being in hospitality.

This industry is a daily referendum on your soul. Every pint poured, every burger flipped, every tune played is a public vote of confidence or a “nah, mate, not for me.”

But there’s a difference between feedback and projection.

There’s a certain type of person who doesn’t want the world to evolve — they just want it to keep reflecting a version of themselves that no longer exists. They’re not mad about your new bar. They’re mad about getting older. About losing their local. About the fact that their favourite pub toilet graffiti got painted over.

And fair enough. Change hurts. But nostalgia doesn’t pay the staff. Nostalgia doesn’t fix the drains. Nostalgia doesn’t file the VAT return at 2 a.m. while you’re sweating into a lukewarm takeaway.

Every takeover we’ve done — The Ruin, The Croft, The Crown, The Colos­seum — has come with its own Greek chorus of doom. People predicting we’ll ruin everything, sterilise the soul, turn it all into some plastic chain operation. Then six months later, they’re in there, pint in hand, dancing to The Walkmen, forgetting that they once typed a 300-word essay online about how we’d “sold out Bristol culture.”

You can’t win that fight, and you shouldn’t try.

The truth is, I don’t run bars for Redditors. I run bars for the people who show up.

The ones who order a drink, stick around, and make a memory that, years from now, they’ll look back on and say, “it used to be better.”

And that’s the cycle. You want that. You need that.

Because if people aren’t nostalgic for what you’ve built in ten years’ time, you probably didn’t make something worth remembering.

So yeah — I read the thread. I even laughed a bit.

Because buried under all that noise, there’s usually a nugget or two of truth.

Sometimes the sound was better before we touched it. Sometimes the old bar really did have a magic corner booth or a better jukebox.

Take the note. Fix what’s fixable.

Then ignore the rest.

Because the alternative is paralysis. You start second-guessing every move, every renovation, every playlist, trying to please the ghosts of Bristol past. And that’s how you end up with bland. That’s how you end up with mediocrity — the death sentence of hospitality.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned after two decades of this madness, it’s that you’ve got to build for today. For the people who walk through the door now.

Tomorrow, they’ll find something new to love or hate. The internet will move on to its next moral panic. But the lights will still come on, the taps will still flow, and some kid will have their first great night in your bar — the one they’ll defend fiercely ten years from now when someone else dares to change it.

That’s how it works. That’s the game. That’s hospitality.

So to the Reddit critics: cheers. Thanks for caring enough to type.

And to everyone else: come have a pint.

We’ll keep making the kind of places worth arguing about.