Dram to leave central London: ‘There are no regrets’
London’s Dram will move from Soho to Hackney in May after two and a half years on Denmark Street.
Chris Tanner, Martyn ‘Simo’ Simpson and Jack Wallis opened Dram in Soho in November 2023. The bar will now move to Dalston’s Kingsland Road for a ‘more sustainable future’ for the business.
Speaking to The Spirits Business, Simpson acknowledged the challenges faced by rising alcohol duty and the new business rates system, but said there wasn’t one particular financial impetus for the move.
“My job is to always look five years into the future. I have models coming out of my eyeballs – I’m a spreadsheet geek,” he said. “You put numbers into a spreadsheet, and it works or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t work, you find another way – and this was our solution.”
“There’s no denying that the industry is having a tough time,” added Tanner. “For us, it’s crucial we have longevity.”
Although Soho is a particularly expensive area to operate a business, Tanner thinks the problems are wider than this small patch of London. He says: “The industry ultimately needs reviewing. There are a lot of barriers to entry for independent owners, but it’s nothing to do with Soho. If you want to open a hospitality business in London, it gets harder and harder.”
Simpson points out that the industry is “vastly different” from five or 10 years ago, pointing to “the amount of extra obstacles and financial strain”. “There is change, which is strange, because there’s the same amount of people as there was five to 10 years ago,” he says. “Everything is very expensive. I do feel sorry for a lot of people. Unfortunately, we may see a gap of new businesses in central London, because it’s so much harder than it was.”
While leaving Soho is the right decision for the Dram brand right now, neither Tanner nor Simpson has any regrets about their choice of launch site. “We were very conscious that in the modern day, you can’t just open a bar,” says Simpson. “There needs to be a brand element to it. Brands have longevity over bricks and mortar sometimes. Chris has been very strict on what we do and how we do it – so I think Soho was the perfect place.”
“I love this venue, and we love Soho,” adds Tanner. “There are no regrets whatsoever. As a proving ground, it has been really good fun and an opportunity for us to find our feet for what Dram is. Absolutely no regrets whatsoever.”
Simpson says: “We love Soho. We’ve been in Soho for a very long time before this, and it’ll always have a big place in our hearts. This was the perfect place to start the brand.”
The new Dram
While many may imagine that a move would have a significant financial outlay, Simpson says “it’s not as much as people think”. “We own all of our equipment, furniture, stock – things like that,” he explains. The only real expense is the interior construction, and the team are lucky that Simpson builds all his bars himself. “I get very good prices on materials,’ he laughs. “In terms of CapEx [capital expenditure], it’s just the build cost, which I can do incredibly cheap.”
Tanner is quick to explain that the new Dram won’t be a “carbon copy” of the old site, despite there being a lot of crossover in equipment. The original Dram site has five rooms over three floors, giving the team the opportunity to experiment with different concepts.
“It gave us an opportunity to find out what Dram is and allow it to grow,” he says. “Now we have an opportunity to consolidate that, expand it and, to some degree, shift it and make it align more with our direction.
“The thing with bars and bricks and mortar is: once you open, that’s what you’ve got. We’ve got this opportunity now to go: what do we want Dram 2 to be like? It’s an opportunity to not necessarily overhaul it, but certainly to expand the things we like and maybe step away from the things we don’t like.”
What precisely that means is yet to be seen, but the new site will have a renewed focus on accessibility and affordability. All drams on the whisky list will be under £20 (US$27), with Tanner conceding that a lower average price point is needed for Hackney, “although I appreciate Dalston is not the Dalston of yore”. “It comes with moving out of central London – we have to be cognisant of the people who are going to be drinking in the bar.”
But the price shift isn’t just to do with the move. “Operators, bars and restaurants are having a hard time, and that ultimately gets passed down to the guests,” he explains. “For us, being able to do more of what we love, but maintaining accessibility and affordability in 2026 is crucial.”
That’ll be achieved by leveraging the team’s connections. “We’ve got decades of time in the industry – we’re getting old,” laughs Simpson. “We have amazing relationships with suppliers. Our friends from 17 years old have grown up and we get to work with them. Especially with the whisky and spirit selection, we can work with suppliers a lot more.
“It’s something we really want to do and make it more accessible, without taking away creativity or bringing down the standard of cocktails.”
Dram Soho’s last service will be on 23 February. To mark the occasion, the team will host a special whisky party in collaboration with East London Liquor Co, with ‘exceptional’ drams and prizes up for grabs.
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