We Did Not Win New Bar of the Year at the Scottish Bar and Pub Awards, and That Was Never the Point

We did not win.

I want to say that plainly and immediately, rather than burying it three paragraphs down. Nectar was shortlisted for New Bar of the Year at the Scottish Bar and Pub Awards, we went to Glasgow, we did not take the prize home. What actually mattered about that day had very little to do with the result, and I want to explain why, honestly, rather than write the version of this article where a loss gets quietly reframed as a secret win.

Everything that happens before the result of the Scottish Bar and Pub awards is announced

The weeks leading up to a black tie awards ceremony are, in a small way, their own event entirely. We were talking about what to wear well before the night itself, which is a strange kind of conversation to be having about a bar that spends most of its year in aprons and service shirts. We closed Nectar for the day so the whole team could actually go together, rather than leaving half the room behind to run service while the rest of us went to Glasgow. That decision alone changed the character of the day. Everyone was in a good mood before we had even left Edinburgh, because for once the team was spending time together in a completely different way than we normally do.

Once the shortlist itself was public, a specific kind of behaviour kicks in that I suspect anyone who has been nominated for anything will recognise. You start checking who else made the list. You ask around. What are our chances, realistically, against these particular venues. And somewhere in that process, almost without noticing it happening, a feeling starts to rise that you might actually be the best one there. It is a strange, slightly involuntary confidence that builds in the weeks before an announcement, regardless of whether it has any real basis.

The voice that was there the whole time

Running alongside all of that, there was a quieter, more persistent voice asking a different question entirely. What happens if we don't win? Does that make us less of a bar than we were the day before the ceremony? And, just as pointedly, what happens if we do win? Does that make us more of one?

I do not think either answer is yes. Whatever the result, we would walk back into Nectar the following week and cook the same food, make the same drinks, and try to give our guests the same evening we have been trying to give them since we opened. The award does not change any of that. It cannot.

The honest truth about what an award like this actually does

Here is something worth being direct about. Unless you work in hospitality, or you happen to follow this specific award closely, the chances are you will never hear about it. It does not bring people through our door. It is not, in any meaningful sense, a customer-facing achievement. It is, at best, a marketing tool, a line we can mention, a piece of external validation from people inside our own industry who understand the standard being judged.

Which means the result itself is genuinely secondary. Being shortlisted and being named the winner carry, for us, roughly the same weight. What matters is not the outcome. It is the fact that the work being done at Nectar was considered good enough, by people who know exactly how difficult that work is, to be included in the conversation at all. That recognition does not increase or decrease depending on who takes the trophy home at the end of the night.

What the day was actually about

So on the night itself, we got dressed up, took a genuinely excessive number of photographs, and enjoyed ourselves properly. We spoke to people we already knew from across the industry and congratulated each other, not on winning anything, but simply on being there, in that room, on that list. That, in itself, is an achievement worth marking. It was what we had actually come to Glasgow to celebrate, whatever happened once the envelope was opened.

We did not win. I have said that twice now because I do not want this article to read as a soft landing dressed up in humility. But the result was never really the point of any of this. The point is what Nectar is able to achieve as a business, night after night, on Broughton Street, away from any ceremony. We are here to make great food and great drinks. We will keep entering competitions and awards, because the process of being measured against the best in our industry continues to make us better at what we do.

We just do not look at ourselves through the lens of whether we win.

Book a table at Nectar Bar and come see what we are actually here for.

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