There's a pub near my house that I've been going to for years. I don't go because the beer is the cheapest, or because the food is the best, or because it's the closest option. I go because when I walk in, the person behind the bar nods. Not a big performance. Just a nod. An acknowledgement that I belong here, that this is my place, that I'm a regular and not a stranger.
That nod is worth more than any loyalty programme, any points scheme, any push notification, any re-engagement email. It's the simplest, most powerful retention mechanism ever invented. And it costs nothing.
The British pub is, when you stop to think about it, the original community product. And it has been running successfully for hundreds of years without a single product manager, growth hacker, or venture capital round. There's a lot to learn from that.
Atmosphere as product
Walk into any great pub and you'll notice something immediately: the atmosphere is the product. Not the drinks. Not the food. Not the decor, specifically. The feeling. The warmth that hits you when you push open the door on a cold evening. The sound level - loud enough to feel alive, quiet enough to have a conversation. The lighting - dim enough to feel intimate, bright enough to see your pint. The smell of hops and old wood and whatever is on in the kitchen.
None of this is accidental. Or rather, the best of it looks accidental, which is the hardest thing to achieve. A good pub feels like it has always been there, like it grew organically from the ground. The furniture doesn't match because it has been accumulated over decades. The pictures on the wall tell a story of the place and the people who have been coming here. The menu is short because they know what they're good at and they don't pretend to be anything else.
Digital products obsess over features and functions. They A/B test button colours and optimise onboarding flows and build elaborate systems to keep users coming back. And some of that works, in the narrow sense of driving metrics. But it misses the fundamental lesson that every good pub owner already knows: people come back to places that feel right. Not places that have the most features. Not places that send the most reminders. Places that feel like they were made for people like them.
When I built the London Pub Guide, this was the insight at the heart of it. Not a database of every pub in London - there are plenty of those. A curated selection of pubs worth going to. Pubs with atmosphere. Pubs where the feeling is the product, not the alcohol.
Choosing your regulars
Here's something that digital product people rarely talk about: the best pubs choose their audience. Not explicitly. Not with a door policy or a dress code or a members-only sign. They choose through identity. Through atmosphere. Through the thousand small decisions that signal who this place is for.
A pub with a jukebox full of Northern Soul attracts a different crowd than a pub with live jazz on Thursday nights. A pub with board games stacked in the corner attracts a different crowd than a pub with twelve screens showing the football. A pub that serves a carefully curated selection of craft beer attracts a different crowd than a pub that serves Carling at three quid a pint. None of these is better or worse. They're just different. And the clarity of who they're for is what makes them work.
Most digital products try to be for everyone. They build generic experiences that offend nobody and delight nobody. They sand down every edge, remove every point of view, optimise for the broadest possible appeal. And they end up feeling like chain restaurants - technically fine, functionally adequate, emotionally empty.
The best products, like the best pubs, have a point of view. They know who they're for, and by extension, who they aren't for. They make choices that some people love and other people hate, and they're fine with that trade-off because they understand that trying to please everyone is the fastest way to being forgotten.
The regular as the ultimate metric
In product terms, a regular is a daily active user who doesn't need to be reminded to show up. Think about how extraordinary that is. No push notifications. No re-engagement campaigns. No "we miss you" emails. No gamification. No streaks. The regular just comes back because the place is good and they want to be there.
Imagine building a digital product where your users came back every day without being asked. Where the product was so woven into their routine, so much a part of their identity, that showing up wasn't a decision - it was a default. That's what a good pub achieves. And it achieves it through the simplest mechanism imaginable: being a place worth being in.
The word "regular" itself is instructive. It implies rhythm, consistency, ritual. The regular doesn't come once and leave a five-star review. They come every week, or every day, and they never think about reviewing anything because the relationship goes deeper than transactional feedback. They're part of the place. Their presence shapes it. The pub would be different without them, and they would be different without the pub.
That mutual shaping - the product and the user evolving together over time - is something most digital products never achieve. They treat users as data points, not people. They optimise for acquisition, not belonging. They measure engagement in sessions and clicks, not in the quiet loyalty of someone who shows up every Tuesday because that's what they do on Tuesdays.
What the pub knows
The pub knows things that Silicon Valley is still trying to figure out. It knows that community can't be manufactured - it has to be cultivated. It knows that the best retention strategy isn't a clever mechanism but a genuine experience. It knows that people want to belong to something, not just use something. It knows that atmosphere isn't a nice-to-have but the entire product.
And it knows that the nod from the person behind the bar - that small, wordless acknowledgement of belonging - is worth more than any notification, any feature, any growth hack ever invented.
When I think about the products I have built, the ones that work best are the ones that feel like pubs. Small, opinionated, clear about who they're for. Not trying to be everything. Not trying to grow at all costs. Just trying to be good enough that the people who find them want to come back.
CultureTerminal is a pub for people who care about what's happening in culture. The London Pub Guide is, obviously and literally, a pub for pub people. First Out is a pub for London commuters who want to shave thirty seconds off their journey. Modern Retro is a pub for people who think brands looked better in the seventies. None of them is for everyone. All of them are for someone.
That is the lesson. Be a pub, not a stadium. Be a place people choose, not a place that chases them. Have a point of view. Know your regulars. And when they walk in, give them the nod.
The rest takes care of itself.
