Put Down Your Phone and Pick Up a Paintbrush

Let's be honest. Nobody in 2025 is walking down a British high street and thinking "wow, this is going well."

The banks have gone. The department stores have gone. Marks & Spencer is hanging on for dear life. What's taken their place? Vape shops, mostly. According to research from Newcastle and Manchester universities, the number of vape shops in England increased by nearly 1,200% between 2014 and 2024. Twelve hundred percent. That's not a trend; that's a replacement of civilisation.

Meanwhile, the pubs — those great British institutions, those temples of warmth and bad decisions — are disappearing too. There were 60,800 pubs in the UK in the year 2000. By 2024, that number had shrunk to roughly 45,000 (British Beer and Pub Association). That's around 15,000 pubs that have simply ceased to exist. For context, that's enough lost pubs to give every single person in Worthing their own. Which, admittedly, would create some problems.

Something is clearly changing. But here's the thing: the story isn't all doom, gloom, and vape clouds. Because something genuinely exciting is rising from the ashes of the traditional high street — and if you look closely, it smells a lot less like cheap e-liquid and a lot more like creativity.

Enter the experience economy

Here's a question worth asking: when did you last go somewhere and come back saying "that was just a really good sit-down"?

You didn't. Nobody does. Because what people remember — what they actually pay for — isn't the chair. It's what happened while they were in it. The conversation. The laughter. The moment someone accidentally threw an axe into a wall. The pottery piece they made with their own hands that is now proudly displayed on their mum's windowsill.

This is what economists and industry analysts call the "experience economy" — the shift away from consuming products (a pint, a meal, a shopping bag) toward paying for experiences (doing something, making something, feeling something). And it is completely reshaping hospitality as we know it.

Themed bars saw a 28.9% increase in numbers across the UK in 2024 — the single biggest driver of the hospitality sector's first quarterly growth in outlet numbers in two years.CGA by NIQ, 2024

Competitive socialising venues — axe throwing, crazy golf, ping pong bars, darts arenas — are no longer a novelty. They're a movement. As one industry report put it: "Guests no longer want to just sit and have a drink. They want to be active participants in their evening." And the hospitality industry's own research backs this up. According to ResDiary's UK & Ireland Hospitality Industry Report 2024, nearly two-thirds of diners (62%) said they chose a restaurant based on the experience they would receive — not the menu, not the price, not the Tripadvisor score. The experience.

The great sobriety (sort of)

Generation Z — born roughly between 1997 and 2012, currently aged between 13 and 28 — is reshaping Britain's relationship with alcohol in ways the drinks industry didn't see coming.

According to the Health Survey for England, over a third of 16 to 24-year-olds (35%) went teetotal in 2024. A record high 24% of all UK adults abstained from alcohol completely in 2025 — up from 19% in 2022. Barclays analyst Laurence Whyatt described it as having "four times the impact of the financial crash on alcohol consumption." The global alcohol market reportedly lost $830 billion in value as Gen Z drinking habits changed.

A record 24% of UK adults abstained from alcohol completely in 2025 — up from 19% in 2022.Health Survey for England, 2025

Now, before the wine industry starts hyperventilating: it's worth noting that the picture is nuanced. Some analysts argue that much of the decline is as much about cost-of-living as values. A third of Gen Z is still technically underage, which does tend to affect the numbers. But even allowing for all that nuance — a 2023 Gallup survey showed a 10% decline in alcohol use among US adults aged 18 to 34 over the previous decade. A Mintel report found that Britons aged 20–24 are now almost half as likely to spend money on alcohol compared to those over 75.

Whatever the full reasons — cost, health consciousness, sober curiosity, the fact that being blackout drunk is very hard to make look good on Instagram — young people are drinking less. And when they do go out, they want something to do while they're there.

Which creates, if you'll forgive the expression, a golden opportunity.

The digital generation desperately wants to go analogue

Here's the great irony of Gen Z: the generation that basically lives on screens is also the generation most desperately craving an escape from them.

According to research firm Human8, 73% of Gen Z report feeling digitally exhausted — despite spending an average of 7.2 hours every day looking at content online. 62% globally say they struggle to build meaningful relationships, with young people themselves noting the difference: "In person, you see their emotions — their laughter, their reactions. Online, you can overthink what they've sent. It's just not the same."

73% of Gen Z report feeling digitally exhausted — despite spending an average of 7.2 hours a day looking at content online.Human8, What Matters 2025

They're not stupid. They know that a notification is not the same as a memory.

And this is showing up in behaviour. Gen Z is increasingly seeking out what researchers call "real-life experiences" — things that happen in a room, with other people, using their actual hands. In Asia-Pacific, 93% of Gen Z planned their finances specifically to engage in hobbies and activities in 2025.

They want to make things. Paint things. Throw things. Build things. Eat things. Laugh at things — especially each other. And they want to do it together, offline, in a room that doesn't have a wi-fi password on the wall.

This is not a niche interest. This is a cultural shift.

What the smart hospitality businesses are doing

While plenty of traditional venues are struggling — and they are genuinely struggling; 3,768 pubs, clubs, and restaurants in England and Wales failed in the twelve months to November 2024 alone — a different kind of hospitality business is quietly thriving.

Flight Club (darts). Swingers (crazy golf). Boom Battle Bar (basically everything). Escape rooms with cocktails. Pottery studios with prosecco. Paint and sip evenings. Gin distillery tours where you make your own bottle. Cookie-decorating workshops. Wreath-making sessions at Christmas.

Notice anything? None of these require alcohol to be the main event. The activity is the main event. The drinks — whether alcoholic or not — are the accompaniment, the social lubricant, the thing that makes it even more fun without being the entire point. This is a fundamentally different business model from "let's get people in and hope they drink."

RSM UK's Leisure and Hospitality Outlook noted that the most successful businesses are "diversifying both their revenue streams and their offerings" — with pubs expanding into food and activities, restaurants pivoting to experiential formats, and venues repurposing floorspace for creative and entertainment uses.

The Moore Kingston Smith Hospitality Report 2025 noted a significant uptick in M&A activity specifically around experience-based, recreation-oriented businesses — venues that "generate revenue through entertainment and activity participation rather than food, drink or overnight stays." In other words: investors are putting their money where the experiences are.

Pottery painting: the original experience venue

And here's where we'd gently like to point out something that probably isn't a coincidence.

Pottery painting — the art of choosing a piece of unfinished ceramic, sitting down with your friends, picking up a brush, and spending a few hours making something you'll actually want to keep — is possibly the most perfectly designed activity for this exact cultural moment.

It's hands-on. It's social. It's something you make. It's something you take home. It produces something tangible in a world that increasingly produces nothing but screen time and scroll fatigue. It works just as well with a glass of prosecco as it does with a cup of tea. You don't need to be good at it for it to be enjoyable — in fact, the worse you are at it, the better the stories.

It works for groups of friends. It works for hen parties. It works for birthdays. It works for families. It works for corporate teams who've run out of ideas for away days. It works for people who just want to do something on a Tuesday afternoon that isn't staring at a laptop.

It is, in short, exactly the kind of real-life, screen-free, hands-dirty, laugh-out-loud experience that a generation of digitally exhausted young people is actively seeking out.

Which is probably why you're reading a blog about it on a website belonging to a pottery café.

The bigger picture

The hospitality industry is at a crossroads. The old model — turn up, drink, leave — is under enormous pressure from every direction: rising costs, squeezed consumers, changing attitudes to alcohol, a high street full of empty shops, and a generation of potential customers who would genuinely rather paint a mug with their mates than do six tequila shots and feel terrible about it tomorrow.

But the new model — come in, do something, make something, feel something, tell everyone about it — is growing. Fast. And it suits the times perfectly.

42% of Brits believe their local high street is in decline (UKHospitality / CGA by NIQ, 2025). But the same survey found that 74% of people believe hospitality needs and deserves more government support — because they recognise that pubs, restaurants, cafés, and creative venues are the heartbeat of their communities. People don't want empty high streets. They just want different things from the spaces on them.

The future of hospitality isn't just a meal or a drink. It's an afternoon you'll remember. It's a shelf in your living room with something on it that you made with your own hands, that's slightly wonky, that makes you smile every time you look at it.

That shelf isn't going to fill itself.