Restaurant // Shackleton Interviews East London's Nebula
Shackleton
London Property advisors with a creative approach to retail, restaurants, leisure & strategic development advice.
We caught up with our friends Nate and Sam from Nebula, the pizza, beer, and cocktails joint making waves through East London. Its prime location on Hackney Road, capacity to seat 200, and incredible courtyard space have all contributed to its success - despite having opened in the middle of a pandemic, just after the first lockdown was lifted last year.
General Manager Sam and Co-Owner Nate talked to us about their experience opening Nebula under these unusual circumstances, why they’ve had so much success, and how they chose the perfect spot (spoiler alert: the Shackleton team had something to do with this last point).
Can you tell us a little bit about Nebula’s conception?
Nate: We, as a company, are big believers in product-market fit. In the hospitality trade in particular, it’s based on the logic of “Where is the opportunity, who are the demographic, what do they want, what do they like, and how can we exceed their expectations?” So when this site came up, I went to the most East London cool person I know, which is Sam. We originally had a different concept in mind, but the more we looked into it, the more it didn’t quite fit the demographic. Operationally exactly the same, but all that surface-level stuff changed slightly and Nebula grew out of it. It’s playing to our strengths: there’s some aspect of “Look at what we can do!” but at the same time it’s “Look at what we can do for you!” more than anything. So Sam’s got great knowledge and insight into beers and ciders and that kind of product, which really fits this area. Pizza made perfect sense to go with that. It’s not like East London needed another pizza place, but it did need somewhere you could get a bloody good drink alongside your pizza. You shouldn’t have to choose between the two. And I come from a cocktail background, so I brought the cocktail angle to it.
We, as a company, are big believers in product-market fit. In the hospitality trade in particular, it’s based on the logic of “Where is the opportunity, who are the demographic, what do they want, what do they like, and how can we exceed their expectations?”
Then just before we opened, in order to really bring Nebula to life, Sam and I spent quite a few conversations with a list of what we called “Ten Things I Love About You” - we knew we were going to open up a pizza, craft beer, and craft cocktail joint. We had a good flavour of the demographic from spending time in the area. And so we asked ourselves what do the people from this area expect from a place that labels itself “pizza, cocktails, and beer”? List ten of the most obvious things they’d expect and then we worked out a way to amplify, elevate, and exceed those expectations. So it’s everything you expect - squared. That’s our proposition.
What were some of the items on that list?
Nate: What are the staff wearing? Usually people aren’t wearing uniforms and in a lot of places, it can be hard to tell who’s staff and who isn’t, so we thought it would be nice to have them in simple but cool tees, aprons, and whatever else. What do we expect from the music? It should be quite loud and upbeat and friendly, so we worked with an East London DJ, Dante Gabriel AKA Tonoshi, and he developed some playlists. And we have record players so that when the DJ comes in, they DJ on vinyl.
And good drinks. I couldn’t name another place around here you could go to for good cocktails where you didn’t have to dress up. Then we’ve got our mainstream beers, but that’s amplified with Sam’s rotating choice of stuff on the fridge and on tap. Our second best-selling line is whatever Sam puts on.
Sam: Everything in the fridge is from most of the breweries you can see from here, which is nice because pretty much the minute people walk through the door, they’ve heard of them. Even if they’ve had it somewhere else, it’s familiar - but good.
Nate: It’s that old adage that perfection is when there’s nothing else to be added and nothing else to be taken away. And that’s what we’ve tried to do here. The cocktails are all quite sophisticated but not in your face. And then you have a beer list like Sam’s put together - fairly extensive but local.
It’s that old adage that perfection is when there’s nothing else to be added and nothing else to be taken away. And that’s what we’ve tried to do here.
Something else that was important to us was having a really good team. Sam works very hard at that because we have high standards. The more our staff know, the more casual they can behave with our guests, and the more our guests feel at home. We also don’t do service charges - we pay our staff well above the London living wage, £13 an hour minimum. There’s something severely broken if staff rely on tips. The better-paid staff you have, the happier they are, and the better they do their jobs. And as a result, we don’t have staff turnover. We’ve got a core team and we’re actively trying to add to that team, but of course, there’s a shortage in the hospitality sector at the moment.
Trying to open a spot like this in a pandemic… What have been your biggest challenges?
Nate: We didn’t have the luxury of time. We had to open very quickly. And trying to get stuff delivered was a struggle.
Sam: Suppliers. People were working two days a week, so you would chat to them on a Monday and nothing would get done until Thursday.
Nate: We had a wall and on the wall, we’d note down what we ordered. You’d think, “Delivery arrived, take that bit of notepaper down.” No. The delivery would arrive and a third of it arrived and a third of it arrived wrong and a third of it didn’t arrive at all. So it became a full-time job just trying to get everything. In the end, there’s nothing you can do because you have to be open with what you’ve got. So there’s been an awful lot of compromises.
Do you think part of your success can be attributed to your ability to compromise - forced to compromise by the ever-changing circumstances of the pandemic?
Nate: People like Sam have to give up so much of their time and energy to be here.
Sam: We were both here pretty much every day for quite a while.
Nate: It’s not even very different now. And importantly, it’s a big space - it’s set up to work. Everything about it is designed to work whenever there are lots and lots of people coming through the doors. So it’s a very airy space and we did tweak the design quite a lot within the context of the pandemic. All the doors and windows, concertina back - you couldn’t be more outside while inside.
... we did tweak the design quite a lot within the context of the pandemic. All the doors and windows, concertina back - you couldn’t be more outside while inside.
How did you find this space and how did Shackleton help you in your search?
Nate: Rob is very closely involved and aligned with our company as a whole. He understands what we’re trying to do, he understands where it would work, he understands London better than we do. He knows everyone. So as soon as the opportunity arose, he’d say “This is the area, what do you think?” and I would head off to that area and spend a lot of covert time there, getting to know the people and getting a feel for the place.
Rob is very closely involved and aligned with our company as a whole. He understands what we’re trying to do, he understands where it would work, he understands London better than we do. He knows everyone.
My business partner Shane and I have a mutual understanding that you should live life as if in a foreign land. When you’re in your hometown, you just walk about carelessly, but when you go on holiday, as soon as you land at the airport you’re suddenly hyper-aware of everything. You have to live every day like that, even at home, and we challenge each other on that when we visit different parts of London.
How have you found settling into this area? How has it changed throughout the pandemic?
Sam: The area in itself hasn’t changed too much. And the locals around here are great. We’ve been quite lucky and had a steady flow of them consistently coming through the door and a lot of them will come back time and time again, which has been really nice for us. We get some locals coming through day after day. And people from the hotel next door come through a couple of times during their stay.
Nate: And I think that comes from us pitching correctly - again, it’s product-market fit.
Make sure you visit Nebula and enjoy their wonderful space, delicious pizza, great selection of cocktails and beers, and amazing staff.
Shackleton is looking for more sites across London for Nebula - if you are marketing a location to suit great cocktails, great pizza, and great beers please contact Rob Fay (rob.fay@shackletonproperty.com).