The smell of fresh paint still lingers as Soho House founder and chief executive Nick Jones walks into his newest club, Little House Balham, which opens later this month. He is a jolly sort, a little tousled, and is all smiles and laughter as he immediately sets about changing things. One of the walls needs a change; staff are summoned down to tweak the loos with a cheery bellow that rumbles up the stairwell. A small team follow him loyally; Jones is king.
This is his first visit to the site in three weeks and his first time seeing it in the flesh since its completion but he says “there’s nothing in here which is a surprise to me, because I’ve been part of the whole journey”. He characterises his working style as “dipping in and out”, fine-tweaking things to taste as he goes along. It’s something he’s done for every Soho House so far. There are 36 now, everywhere from Mykonos to Mumbai — “but it sounds more impressive than it is, because we have a brilliant team and I can literally dip in and out. And even if I didn’t, it would still be pretty good!”
If 36 clubs seems rather a lot, it’s nothing on what’s next: earlier this year, reports announced that by the close of 2027, there would be 85 Soho Houses across the globe. Is that still the plan? “Very much so. And it’s all led by our members’ desire to have us open new houses in new cities,” smiles Jones. And why here, why now? “It’s funny because you think, why has Soho House come to Balham?” Well, er, yes. “I think people want more convenience, you know? We have so many members who live here in south London, so the Little House idea works really well for them — if I were in Balham, I’d go, isn’t that great that for my membership I’ve got something nearby?”
But expanding so rapidly does risk something: reputation. Private members’ clubs glean their standing from being, well, private — and therefore select. People tend to want a club, not a chain. Is Jones worried he’s watering his brand down? “I mean, I’ve said this many times before, but when we went from one to two houses, people said that was dilution. Expansion is not a nice word, I think generally in people’s eyes, but we’re a global company.” With an eye to global domination? “No, no, no!” He lets out a boyish giggle. “Not at all. Just the odd site globally.”
The odd site? Perhaps, though recently the Brighton Beach House opened its doors while on the same day Balham opens, on July 25, the company’s first foray into Scandinavia launches with Soho House Copenhagen. Sites across the world in are in the works. But, he says, these aren’t copy and paste jobs. “Every site is carefully, individually chosen: every city, every building, every new design — everything is designed for the place, we don’t just go ‘right, we’ll put that there, pop this over there’. We always start with a fresh piece of paper.”
More clubs will make room for more memberships, which are eagerly vied for. At present, there are about 130,000 members worldwide, with some 80,000 more would-bes on the waiting list. Demand is evidently there, but securing a spot is looking likely to become easier too. But bearing in mind the famous Groucho Marx quip — “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member” — is he worried that the same sense of exclusivity that makes Soho House desirable will evaporate?
Jones recoils momentarily. “Well I mean, first of all, we’re inclusive — our membership is about everyone. We encourage everyone to join, we want people from every part of society, we want our membership to be totally multicultural. But you have to be kind and decent and you have to have a creative soul,” he says.
“You do have to be a member to get into the house, but to be a member, it’s a very inclusive process.”
The counter to this is, of course, cost: the new Little House is £700 a year to join; global membership to Soho House starts at £2,500. Despite his success — Soho House is valued at somewhere around £2.5 billion, and Jones owns six per cent of it (American billionaire Ron Burkle and restaurateur Richard Caring own the rest, though the company went public last year) — Jones seems keenly aware of the need to keep prices in check.
“We’re very conscious about what’s going on, and we want to pass as on as few increases onto our members as possible,” he says. He adds with a nod to the bar: “Our cocktails are cheaper than they were in 2019. We’ve now got 10 cocktails for a tenner — 10 different cocktails that is! — which is different from a few months ago. We’re very keen to make sure people can come to a Soho House and have a club breakfast for under £10, or have a combo lunch for, you know, cheaper than it would be in a Pret.”
A representative for Jones later clarifies that the £10 cocktails are on a “different menu to the standard one”, so perhaps Jones still has a little work to do.
Jones’ rise is an interesting one. He is famously tech-averse, cheerfully admitting he’s never used a laptop and uses his phone for nothing but calls. His early business days were not particularly smooth going. Soho House morphed out of his restaurant group Over The Top which was not, he says with a self-depreciating chuckle, “any good at all. Actually, the one that became Café Boheme was a disaster, a proper disaster”. His break came in 1995 after a helping hand from Paul Raymond, the late founder of Soho Estates. Raymond lent Jones the money for the original Soho House on Greek Street. Why?
“I think he just felt sorry for me, to be honest!” Jones grins. “I didn’t have any money to open a private members’ club, so I needed to find another way of paying for it. So I asked him, he said no —but then as I was leaving, he said maybe he could pay for it and then add it to my rent, so that’s what happened. He was a lovely man.”
But Jones doesn’t seem the nostalgic type, and seems more set on what’s coming next. It may, for the first time ever, include Soho House making a profit. The group has long carried heavy debt. “Of course it bothers me, but we’re in build mode — if we stopped building, we’d become immediately profitable. But I think even next year, even in build mode, we’re going to become net profitable.”
Build mode for now includes a Mexican house opening by the end of the year, and while Jones laughs away any suggestion he’ll open up on the private island off the Scottish coast he owns with wife Kirsty Young, there is a twinkling suggestion that yet is more to come. “I’m excited about Africa, I’m excited to expand more into Asia.”
After 27 years, then, his enthusiasm shows no sign of waning. Why? “I care about every move we make, every single move.” Fleetingly, Jones looks nonplussed, as if that should be obvious. And actually, in a way, it is.
