February 11, 2024 - 2:15pm
“The perfect first date would be espresso martinis at Soho House.” Does this sound like a tempting proposition? According to a LinkedIn post from August by one Jack Raines, it was the key to making $343,000. Raines explained that he had created an AI-generated dating app profile for an “8/10 brunette” woman living in New York featuring that very line. Her 30,000 matches (“ChatGPT has been handling the conversations”) would all fork out thousands of dollars for a membership, bumping up Soho House’s earnings and giving Raines a unique trading advantage.
This, of course, didn’t actually happen. It was one of Raines’s many LinkedIn “shitposts” featuring satirical get-rich-quick schemes. The true state of Soho House’s finances, according to financial analysts GlassHouse Research, will have members weeping into their signature “Picante” cocktails. GlassHouse published a stinging report this week, alleging the chain had a “broken business model” with “terrible accounting”; had admitted too many members, with a corresponding drop in service standards; and that its worth, after 28 years of never turning a yearly profit, was “zero”.
Soho House rejected all this as “false and misleading”. But with its board members now buying back shares to potentially take the company private, something is clearly amiss. In December, founder Nick Jones acknowledged the overcrowding complaints by announcing a yearlong freeze on new members in London, New York and Los Angeles. Perhaps the most succinct appraisal of Soho House’s predicament is a meme posted by the Instagram account Sohohousememes, following the format of a sweating superhero having to choose between two buttons: one says “make money”, the other “be a good members club”.
That’s it, really. The point of a club is that some people aren’t part of it. But you can’t charge non-members membership fees. The original Soho House — a house, in Soho, at 40 Greek Street — was meant to be a haven for creative types, like the Groucho Club a minute’s walk away. A slightly try-hard “no tie” policy was loosely enforced to keep out those boring bankers. But Soho House ended up becoming much more than a single Soho house. It now has 41 branches across the world and 250,000 members. This doesn’t exactly reek of exclusivity.
Scaling up vertiginously without worrying about profit is standard corporate practice these days. This is all very well if you’re in the food delivery game, but the mystique of a club will not survive such a process. In a way, Soho House was a victim of its own success: it kept opening branches and people kept baying to be let in. But somewhere along the way, it stopped being a club and became another upmarket hospitality brand, selling expensive cocktails, boutique hotel stays and even furniture, if you want to take the vibe home with you.
And it might be that vibe which truly explains things. Maybe, back in the days of Tony Blair and David Cameron, when wearing a suit without a tie marked you out as a maverick free-thinker, Soho House was genuinely cool. Today, it represents the normie’s idea of tastefulness, with tightly harmonious colour schemes and vague gestures towards mid-century style. The decor, music and clientele are a little more interesting than you might find in a Ritz-Carlton, but not so interesting as to be challenging.
There’s none of the arcane tradition of a traditional London gentleman’s club; none of the Bond-villain eccentricity of the Tory-slash-oligarch hangout 5 Hertford Street, nor the scruffy ease of bohemian nooks like the Academy Club or Trisha’s. And this is why Soho House could expand the way it did. The only time I’ve been to the original Greek Street branch, I was the guest of a friend working for an asset management company, who hadn’t updated his LinkedIn account for fear of jeopardising his application. He had, I think, joined mainly to take dates there. Maybe Raines’s LinkedIn post wasn’t such a joke after all.
Josiah Gogarty is assistant editor at The Knowledge, an email news digest, and a freelance writer elsewhere.
josiahgogarty
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SubscribeI’ve never been there, and don’t care.
I very much doubt that you would be welcome, Rick. You don’t have the style for it.
Nobody cares whether you care or not.
New website is hideous.
Indeed, not at all well-designed.
I hope it’s not a sign that the Unherd team are looking to reposition themselves in the media market – a form of journalistic “Soho House”?
I’ve long wondered about Unherd’s goal in terms of its target market.
When I first discovered the site, in the plague year of 2020, I thought it was a plucky upstart. But I now understand it has deep ties to the UK Establishment, and is physically located next to Parliament.
I don’t think this magazine is really aimed at the average person. It seems to be speaking to that part of the Establishment still willing to oppose the illiberal trends that dominate modern politics. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but increasingly I wonder if Unherd is interested in readers like me.
When they opened the club, I decided that I would have to think about renewal. We’ll see.
It’s noteworthy that their banner accompanying the subscription advert includes the term “like-minded people”. That’s something i wouldn’t expect to see in a journalistic venture seeking to differentiate itself from the crowd.
My own interpretation is that Unherd exists essentially just to influence centre-right think tanks. The journalism is a useful side effect.
When I first came across Unherd, the writing was of a higher standard than most, often from a distinctive perspective and with some wit. This made it both nifty and unusual. In the last year I’ve got out of the habit of reading it because both those qualities have gone awol. Quite simply: it’s now quite boring and its character has evaporated. The re-design – ‘let’s make it look more like lots of photos!’ – is likewise, indicative of a greater interest in form than content. Now looks and reads pretty much like everything else. A shame to see it drifting into the sunset, but there you go.
Is it ever.
I quite like it. The new design certainly highlights the fact Unherd produces a ton of content (three major essays five days a week, plus shorter articles in The Post, plus videos). That’s a lot of content to explore, and a bit daunting at first sight.
I guess it’s the former web designer and small c conservative about me. I expect I’ll get used to it, but the home page is just a chaotic jumble. The former design was elegant, not a word I’d use here. Heavy sanserif font for the articles is jarring.
That’s pretty much my impression. Wouldn’t be surprised to see further adjustments, but may depend on who they’re employing for design/management purposes, i.e. whether it was a one-off redesign project or with scope for ongoing maintenance.
I find it impossible to work out which are new articles and which are old.
Agree. I cringed when I saw (was exposed to? ) the new layout. It is cluttered, not user-friendly at all and resembles the first page of a tabloid, rather than reflecting the way UnHerd positions itself as a niche, rather high-brow publication.
On the plus side, the new voting system at least shows clearly up- and downvotes.
Still, I miss the oldest system that showed the names of those who voted, be it in favour or against. For me, this meant taking responsibility for the way one voted.
I completely agree. The content might be fine for quantity, but the quality has dropped like a stone in the last year.
I don’t much like the new look, but on the other hand it’s easier to find slightly older pieces.
I agree!
Why change it? The classic look was simple and good
Maybe a better business model might be where you have to pay not to be a member.
I mean, I’d be up for that as I hate expresso martinis.
If there ever was a first-world problem, then this is it.
I’d say second only to getting stains out of lighter colored cashmere.
This new-look website with its 3 column layout bears an uncanny resemblance to David Horowitz’ frontpagemag.com.
The change seems to have rattled the regulars but will a Lifestyle and a None button bring in new readers?
A missed opportunity to improve the comments section: list the downticks next to the upticks rather the have them cancel one another out.
I notice that the red flags have disappeared as well. Too much abuse being too easily reported perhaps?
They appear to have brought that in.
Yes, you’re right but it didn’t work that way when I tried it yesterday.
Am I being dense ? Why are the comments below about the website – not about the Soho House article ?
You are indeed being dense – or putting on a show of being a serious minded fellow among all these trivial commentators. The new-look website is a more interesting and relevant topic of discussion for the UnHerd readership – obviously.
Because no one of any sense gives a töss about Soho House.
Being rich has never been cool, even if the cool people are rich. Would you pay to be a member of a club that includes H&M?
Hahaha there’s so many comments on the new website. Quite like the new website design. Streamlined. Easy to find articles by date. Easy to digest layout. Can scroll through by headlines at the top of each section. Design fits perfectly on my phone.
Think Unherd caters to everyone. Whether they are affiliated with the establishment or not, I don’t think so but most people are affiliated with something. Whether it does only attract a certain crowd, think it does. But what do I know? Only been there once and likely drop by mid May. The journalism is interesting though. Journalism is a reflection of thinking and not necessary completeness of information or accuracy. If it can simply spark critical thinking and bring people together, it’s good enough. Thanks!