A news article pops up, courtesy of Google’s all-knowing algorithm. It tells me it has rained every single day in the UK this year. A quick glance outside at the lashing, cold evening confirms what we already knew. The next article slides under my thumb as I scroll — a headline I’ve read over and over. It tells me Gen Z are drinking less and less.

How someone puts a negative spin on a generation looking for an option to socialise outside of pints and WKD is beyond me. As a bar owner, I should be panicking. We survive on someone deciding four espresso martinis is wisdom on a Wednesday. Enlightenment doesn’t exactly help the cash flow.

I don’t open the article. I’ve read dozens like it. The numbers are inarguable: the age of alcohol being the centrepiece of coming together is drawing to a close. You can blame this on self care, education, or simply a generation catching strays from its forefathers, resulting in not having the funds to spend on booze. 

Maybe the latter led to the former. Maybe it was by choice. Either way, the inescapable truth is that an entire generation isn’t drinking like mine did. 

The rain outside picks up. I will scroll through a few more articles. Watches. A new art exhibit. The failings of the government. Google knows me all too well. I pack up my things to head home before the evening shift starts.

It’s a cold Wednesday in January. It’s raining. It’s been dark since 4pm for three months. I step outside expecting a quiet sreet. Instead, I find a line of people, it stretches from our door, past three shops and down to the traffic lights.

Our modest sixty-person capacity is going to leave well over half of these 150 people or so thoroughly disappointed. 

They aren’t here to sip a spicy margarita and comment on how it compares to Soho House’s. They aren’t here to pursue some new IPA that no one asked for.

They travelled and are standing in the rain for Uno.

Yes, that Uno. The game where rules differ house to house, and the only thing we can all agree on is that Uno’s official rules are wrong (of course you can play a +4 on a +4).

I chat to a couple of them and apologise for the rain, assuring them the doors will open shortly. To my surprise, almost everyone in the line is either with one friend or entirely on their lonesome. People from all corners of London who didn’t have plans heard there was a place they could come, sit with a stranger, and ruin their evening through a well-timed Uno Reverse.

This generation may be drinking less, but they are finding ways to create community outside of alcohol. Are they teetotal? Of course not. But what they lack in alcohol tolerance, they make up for in with a tenacity for inventing anything and everything to bring people together. 

I should mention this isn’t a magical evening spawned out of hopes and dreams. It was organised by Sonder and Quti App, who we work with on a slew of events. All of them are structured so alcohol plays second fiddle over the course of the evening. Creativity and community take centre stage.

Either way, If the future of nightlife is 150 people queuing in the rain to sit with strangers and argue over a +4 card, maybe Gen Z doesn’t need saving.

Maybe the industry just needs to catch up.