Why Noir has become Northampton's hottest new bar

Dubbed as Northampton’s ‘sexy’ new wine bar, Noir opened on Friday, September 11th to an overwhelming success. Seven weeks in it continues to be praised and the five star reviews keep rolling.

Inspired by European culture, Noir is the vision of owner Clare Dougles and business partner Bailey Cooper’s joint passion for wine: “I travel a lot, (Bailey) travels a lot. And in most European cities, you have this kind of style bar, that's a little bit more informal.”

While Northampton plays host to a variety of pubs and restaurants, Clare is sure Noir’s out of place business model could be the key to their current success.

“This isn't like an unusual concept in big cities. For Northampton, it perhaps is a little bit different because people are afraid to open something nice here. I can understand why it's risky. It's not necessarily if you were looking at it on a spreadsheet, this is not the demographic that would automatically jump out at you as to bougie wine, it isn’t”

Noir is open Wednesday to Saturday from 3:00pm and offers a different theme for every day and a change in “vibe” as the hours tick by: 

“If you come in at lunchtime on Saturday, it's completely different to 11 o'clock at night on Saturday. Different demographic, different drinks selling, different vibe, like the lighting changes, it's completely different legs.”

While you can grab a late afternoon coffee with your friends during the day, as the sun goes down so too do the lights. The bar creeps into an alluring evening hangout with low red lighting and music paired with your wine: 

“We wanted to do something that brought together all the things we love. So music, art, and wine.”

The bar's model is “a focus on quality products”, not serving any commercial spirits, wines or beers, with “just a little step up on quality but not necessarily a leap on price.”

Clare says: “There's just a level of quality that we try and put into everything because I don't think either of us would put our names on something that wasn’t anything less than we’d want to drink ourselves.”

When asked what separates them from competitors "experience” seems to play a big part: “We do have 20 years experience in wine.”

“If people want recommendations, they don't have to have any real idea on wine themselves; they can just come in and tell us kind of what they like in terms of flavour and we sort out the rest.”

Clare’s background as a wine seller and previous business ventures (Ruby and Claret in Earls Barton and top 100 restaurant Ember in Wellingborough) has given her the confidence and footing to “take the risk”: “I'm not a stranger to opening bars in Northamptonshire, just not in Northampton, and my previous business was very successful.”

“I'm very privileged that I've only ever worked in and roamed successful hospitality businesses. And I guess I am prepared to do the work.”

“I always think if you put something out into the world and you're genuinely passionate about it, you care about it, people can see that thought and care, you're gonna attract that back to you. I guess some might call me hopelessly romantic, but it’s always worked for me so far.”

“With Northampton, I feel like people like me do have to put that money where the mouth is if we ever want this place to be somewhere that other people get excited about, it has to start somewhere.”

Looking back seven weeks on from opening Clare says: “We were blown away. We weren't expecting it to go quite as far as it has. We were expecting to have to build, still be building to the level we reached in the first couple of weeks. It's been really well supported. We're very grateful.”

She continues: “We kind of just hit the ground running because when you open a business certainly in this climate, you have to get trading straight away. In previous businesses, I've always had the luxury of having working capital. This one I didn't. Everything, all the costs and everything had gone up and that's even things like business rates and the support that used to be there for small business isn't anymore.”

When asked if there are any worries about opening in the current economic climate, Clare says: “I don't think about it. No in all honesty, if you just thought about the negative all the time, that you wouldn't do it, then.”

Clare finished by touching on the businesses future: “There's a lot of different paths this could take, sure. I just like us to get through year one and look back and be really happy with what we've done and just go ‘Yeah that was worth the risk’.”