Our Second Edinburgh Fringe at Nectar: What Actually Changed From Year One

This was our second Edinburgh Fringe at Nectar, and it looked almost nothing like the first.

Nectar's birthday falls on 1 August, which means our first Fringe and our first year of existing at all began in the same breath. That timing made last year genuinely hectic in a way I don't think we fully appreciated until we had a second Fringe to compare it against. We opened at lunchtime and stayed open until 1am, every single day, convinced we had the energy and the capacity to serve people constantly for three and a half weeks. We did not, not really. We got through it, but it was not the right decision, and over the course of the following year we changed course to actually look after ourselves and the team properly.

This year, we opened at 5pm on weekdays and 12pm at weekends, the same hours we run the rest of the year. We stayed open until 1am only on Fridays and Saturdays, not across the whole week. It was a completely different Fringe as a result, and a much better one.

Why we changed the hours, even during the Edinburgh Fringe at Nectar

Last year we did get the occasional night that justified staying open until 1am on a Tuesday or Wednesday. But it wasn't worth it. The nights that got genuinely busy were the exception rather than the rule, and running a full late-night operation on the off chance one particular evening might pick up burned out the team for very little return. It was also a different Fringe in a more fundamental sense: nobody knew us yet. What we thought were busy nights last year, the ones that felt like proof we were doing something right, were nothing compared to what an ordinary Friday looks like at Nectar now. We were measuring ourselves against a bar with no reputation and no returning guests, because that was genuinely what we were.

Where the Fringe crowds actually go

One thing that became clear this year, watching the city properly for a second time, is that the bulk of the Fringe crowd moves between St James Quarter and the Old Town, where most of the venues and shows are concentrated. That is where the flyering, the queuing, and the general chaos of the festival is most visible.

What surprised me more was how many tourists are in the city during August who don't actually know the Fringe is happening. They are simply here for Edinburgh, and the festival is an accidental backdrop to their trip rather than the reason for it, which adds a genuinely strange layer of madness to the whole month: two separate populations, one deliberately chasing shows and one wandering into the middle of the world's largest arts festival without quite realising it.

Who actually walks through our door in August

What spills over to Nectar during Fringe is a specific mix of people, and it has become more defined in year two than it was in year one.

There are the people looking for somewhere good to eat and drink before or after a show, and this crowd has become genuinely useful to us in an unexpected way. We talk to them about what they've seen, and our own team has started keeping notes on which shows are actually worth seeing, built entirely from what our guests tell us across a month of these conversations. It has turned Nectar into a small, informal clearing house for Fringe recommendations, which fits naturally alongside our own guide to planning a day around the Fringe.

There are the regulars, a group that was only just beginning to form this time last year and has become something real over the twelve months since. These are the guests who come to Nectar regardless of whether the Fringe is on, and having a genuine base of them for the first time changed the character of the month considerably. Last August we were entirely dependent on whoever walked past. This August, a meaningful proportion of every night was people who had chosen to be there specifically.

And there are the tourists looking for local, genuine cuisine rather than whatever is nearest to the show they just left. This is the crowd our Greek and Mediterranean food identity has been built for from the beginning, and it is the one that most directly validates the decision to be specifically Greek rather than generically Mediterranean on a street with a lot of competing options.

Fully booked, and what that actually means

The clearest difference between this year and last is simply how busy we were. We were fully booked most weekends, and increasingly on weekdays too, which was never the case in year one.

We love the atmosphere of a table that can sit for a while, order slowly, and let an evening unfold at its own pace. That is genuinely the kind of hospitality we want to offer. But when the room is as busy as it was this August, we could not always allow that, and turning tables faster than we would like became a necessity rather than a choice. If you are looking to come in and sit for a proper length of time during Fringe, the honest advice is to book after 7.30pm, when the pace of the evening naturally slows and there is more room to actually stay.

Weekend bookings specifically were the tightest all month, and it is always better to book ahead rather than walk in and hope. The number of people we had to turn away this August is not something I am proud of, but it is also, honestly, a genuinely new problem to have. A year ago the concern was filling the room. This year it was managing the fact that it filled itself.

New things that didn't exist last Fringe

This year's Fringe overlapped with two things that simply did not exist during our first one. We are now hosting Greek Nights on the last Friday of every month, and we hosted our first birthday party for the bar itself, which fell right in the middle of the festival given our 1 August anniversary.

Both of these added a genuinely different texture to August this year, evenings that were about something specific to Nectar rather than simply riding the general energy of the festival happening around us. If you want to know when the next one is happening, the best way to find out is to follow us on Instagram, since these tend to be announced there first and they fill up fast once people know.

The menu is simply better

The last difference, and the one I am most confident about stating plainly, is the food and drinks themselves. What we are serving now is meaningfully better than what we were serving during our first Fringe, and the reason is the thing we have written about before: our commitment to changing the menu every three months rather than settling on something that works and leaving it alone.

That constant evolution is what elevates the experience over time. It also means that a guest who came during last year's Fringe and returns this year is genuinely encountering something different, not a refreshed version of the same idea but dishes and cocktails that reflect a full year of development, feedback, and ambition. That is precisely the effect we want: people wondering what will be different the next time they come in, rather than knowing exactly what to expect before they sit down.

What next year will probably look like

I don't know exactly what our third Fringe will look like, but if the pattern of the last two years holds, it will be different again. Busier, most likely. More regulars. A menu that has moved on again. Possibly new events we haven't thought of yet.

What I do know is that the version of Nectar that exists during Fringe now is a considerably more sustainable, more confident, and genuinely better version of the bar than the one that tried to stay open eighteen hours a day out of pure inexperience last August. We learned that the hard way, and I'm glad we did.

Book a table at Nectar Bar, and if you're planning ahead for next year's Fringe, our full guide to spending a day around it is the place to start.

Opening hours Tuesday to Thursday: 5pm to 11pm Friday: 5pm to 1am Saturday: 12pm to 1am Sunday: 12pm to 11pm Monday: Closed