Playhouse in Northampton: Popular town centre bar celebrates 'massively successful' first year in business

A popular Northampton bar is celebrating a “massively successful” first year in business.

Playhouse, based at the former Revolution nightclub in Bridge Street, celebrated its first birthday on November 8.

The bar, dubbed 'Northampton's very own funhouse', has taken the town by storm in the last year and has a five-star TripAdvisor rating to back that up.

General manager Leslie Walker has reflected on its success. He said: "It's fantastic. It was weird converting an old Revolution into something a bit more exciting for the town. The concept is being loved by the public and people just want to be out and feel like they are getting something for their money. We're giving people an experience. There's always something to do here.

"The feedback: from the public has been fantastic, we have jumped on to number one spot on Tripadvisor for pizza, for the bar as well it has been brilliant. The public is loving the experience. It's been a massive success."

Playhouse, which was the first one to open in the country, prides itself on its national award nominated homemade pizzas, cocktails, range of games and low queue times.

Leslie said: "It's been fun because Northampton hasn't really had anything like this before. It was nice to try this here and show it works. We've loved doing it and we didn't realise how diverse the groups coming in would be. We're seeing everything from families, to couples, to people nostalgically coming in to play the old school games like Pacman, Space Invaders, Tetris. Our demographic is completely across the board, which is something we didn't think would happen."

Talking about the games aspect of the bar - of which there is a wide range, including the bespoke Raceway track - Leslie said it brings different groups together.

He said: "People make friends. We've made a lot of friends. Playing games together, it's quite a binding thing. We load people up on the Raceway who don't know each other and by the end they're all having a beer downstairs together. You get couples challenging couples who don't know each other. It's just fabulous to see.”

Asked what he has learnt about the business, Leslie said “people didn't want to sit still anymore, they want to get involved”.

He said: "During Covid a lot of people were forced to sit down and told 'there's your table don't move, don't breathe'. Then coming in to us, what we learnt was we had to get people to open up, we want people to mingle, compete, talk. Your table is just a base camp, that's your area, but get up and get involved. I think that's what people really like about it."

Leslie went on to reveal his secrets to success.

He said: "Our service, our pizza, our gaming. We work so hard on making the best products as quick as possible. Instead of trying to do everything at once, we do one thing and do that the best we can do. We are trying to make it the best experience. We stick to that and do it properly."

Going forward, Leslie says he is focused on continuing the success and development of Playhouse. "The way this has been received it can only get better," Leslie said.