Four branches, ten thousand people, and a spread of one-tenth – and nobody else in five postcodes has managed it
Simmons in Soho holds a 4.7 from five thousand seven hundred and thirty people, and charges ten to twenty pounds.
It is the fourth Simmons in this survey and the largest, and the four of them together have done something that no other chain in five hundred and eighty-six articles has come close to.
The four
Bank: 4.8 from two thousand three hundred and twenty-nine.
Monument: 4.7 from two thousand two hundred and twenty-one.
Piccadilly: 4.7 from sixteen hundred and eighty-seven.
And Soho: 4.7 from five thousand seven hundred and thirty.
A spread of one-tenth of a star, across four branches, in two districts, on a combined sample of over twelve thousand people.
Why this should not happen
Because everybody else is worse, and we have measured all of them.
Four Be At Ones: 4.6, 4.6, 4.3, 4.5 – a spread of three-tenths.
Three Prince of Wales pubs: 4.6, 4.4, 4.2 – four-tenths.
Two Bootleggers: 5.0 and 4.3 – seven-tenths, and the explanation is entirely sample size.
Two bars in the same building, same operator, same night: 5.0 and 3.8.
The star rating measures the gap between expectation and delivery, and the gap moves with the pavement – which is why almost every chain in this survey drifts.
Simmons does not drift.
What they are doing
Promising almost nothing, and clearing it.
The list is long and cheap. The room is loud. There is no rope, no hidden door, no Prohibition premise, no Victorian explorer. Nobody is going to make you feel stupid for ordering wrongly.
And that last point is worth more than any cocktail. We have found it in every postcode: ratings are almost never destroyed by what is in the glass. They are destroyed in the ninety seconds before it arrives – by the wait, by the door, by the moment somebody was not looked at.
Archer Street, four hundred metres from here, holds a 3.3 from nine hundred people, and it is entirely about the door.
Simmons has no door. It has a room, and a price, and a very long list.
The lesson
The safest route to a high rating is to lower the barrier rather than raise the promise – and the entire industry is doing the opposite, at enormous expense, and getting worse numbers.
Verdict
Excellent value, genuinely good drinks, and the most consistent chain in five postcodes.
What consistency actually costs
An enormous amount, and it is completely invisible.
To hold the same score across four sites you need the same training, the same stock, the same measures, the same recipes, and the same recruitment – and every one of those is a system that somebody has to build, maintain and audit, at cost, forever.
The independent bar with a 4.9 achieved it with one exceptional person behind the counter. That is a wonderful thing and it does not scale and it cannot be bought.
A chain holding a 4.7 across twelve thousand people has done something different and considerably harder to explain, and the trade press has never once written about it, because it is not a story.
Verdict
Excellent value, genuinely good drinks, and the most consistent chain in five postcodes.
Go before seven. The two-for-one is the whole point and everybody knows it.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
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