Comment: Growth of small outlets having outsized impact
The Little Green Dragon sits in a former retail unit on a parade of shops in Winchmore Hill, North London, and has just been named one of four businesses shortlisted for the National Pub of the Year title by CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale).
It’s a friendly bijou place that I’ve visited on a number of occasions and contributes to the vibrancy of the local high street and is a welcome addition to the area that’s been embraced by the local community. They had lost their previous local pub, the much larger The Green Dragon, to a housing developer.
It is one of a growing number of compact micro-pubs around the UK that are typically housed in vacant retail units and max-out their capacity at about 20-plus people. What’s incredible is that there is a second micro-pub in the CAMRA shortlist – the Three B’s in Bridlington – which highlights the popularity of these mini concepts.
Clearly these are not traditional retailers but I mention them here because it is just such businesses that are helping breathe life back into our high streets. Thankfully changes to planning regulations have helped micro-pubs and other non-retail models take on the leases of vacant retail units, gain a change of use, and provide local people with services that can’t be replicated on the internet.
This has fuelled a rise in the likes of tattoo parlours, nail salons and beauty specialists as well as independent gyms, with as many as 1,000 having opened since 2019 on high streets across the UK, according to Green Street.
These are not the traditional gyms with row upon row of scary looking kit but are small operations offering services such as dance, pilates, yoga and CrossFit that is tailored to a local audience. They are attracted to the intimacy and convenience these smaller, localised businesses can provide. In contrast, larger organisations invariably struggle to achieve such personalisation.
This new breed of mini-gyms are often run by personal trainers who might have previously had to visit people’s homes but can now take on physical units and cater for greater numbers of clients. One such business is female-only fitness studio Her that interestingly took on a former Travel agents in Hertfordshire.
If there is one retail business that has been hit hard by the shift to online it is travel agents but this has not necessarily spelled the end of such stores because Hays Travel is counterintuitively looking for more outlets on the high street. It generates 90% of its sales through its physical stores, which now total 500, and is contributing to keeping high streets alive as it believes customers want more human interactions, not less.
Other smaller businesses populating vacant units on struggling high streets are coffee shops. Yes, I know, these are hardly a new phenomenon but the ability for new disruptive coffee brands to take on small vacant units is becoming a feature of the retail landscape. Among the new breed of operators is Blank Street Coffee that is typically operating out of units measuring only 350 sq ft with just two employees per shift. They use cutting-edge automated espresso machines that pushes up deliverable volumes while minimising queues.
These various independent businesses taking on small units does not turn the dial in the same way as an established retailer rolling out traditional-sized stores across the UK. But they are growing in number and the fact these interesting operators often punch well above their weight is a bonus.
They often act as a draw for larger players, which suggests they are delivering an outsize contribution and a halo effect to high streets up and down the country. I’m pleased to say The Little Dragon and its compatriots have fire in their belly that is helping warm up the high street.
