How to run a pub crawl without losing half the group

Every pub crawl loses people. Not dramatically - someone goes to the bar, someone steps out to take a call, someone stops to talk to a person they know, and the group leaves without noticing.

The structural problem is that groups depart venues gradually, so nobody can tell whether the group has left or is leaving.

Publish the route

The single most effective thing you can do, and it takes two minutes before you go out.

Write the list of venues in order and send it to the group chat. Now nobody depends on being in earshot of the decision. Anyone who loses the group knows exactly where to go next, and anyone joining late can catch up without a phone call.

Rules that go with it:

• Everyone gets the list, not just the organiser.
• Do not deviate silently. If the plan changes, send one message.
• Anyone separated goes forward to the next stop, never backwards. Backtracking is how people spend a night missing each other.

Count at the door you are leaving, not the one you are entering

This is the actual fix for gradual departure.

The instinct is to arrive somewhere and notice who is missing. By then they are several hundred metres and one venue behind.

Instead, count before you leave, at the exit, and say out loud “we’re going to [next place] in five minutes”. Two people can be missing at a bar or a toilet, and five minutes finds them. Twenty minutes later, in a different venue, it does not.

Budget more time than you think

Moving eight people between venues takes about twenty minutes: settling up, finishing drinks, toilets, coats, the smokers, and the walk. Plans that assume five minutes fall apart by the third stop.

Also worth knowing:

• Big groups get refused. Many venues will not admit more than six to eight at once late in the evening. Split deliberately and arrive in twos and threes, rather than being turned away as a block.
• Later venues have queues and door policies. Put them earlier in the route than instinct suggests.

The end of the night

The point where groups genuinely scatter.

• Agree how people are getting home before anyone is too far gone to plan.
• Nobody walks home alone if it can be avoided, and the group should know who left and roughly when.
• Check in the next morning. A quick message in the group chat is how you find out that someone did not get home fine.

Where Nearby fits

We build Nearby, so read this as interested.

The fit for a night out is good, with one honest caveat: a phone is at its least reliable at 1am - flat battery, in a pocket, in a loud room - so this supports the route, it does not replace it.

What it does: the pin marks the next venue, and everyone can see who is still at the last one and who is already ahead. That removes the “have they left?” uncertainty that causes most of the splitting. Latecomers see exactly where the group is now rather than reading back through a chat.

The browser join is what makes it work for a night out specifically. Groups on a crawl are mixed and fluid, people join partway through, and nobody installs an app in a bar. One link, a name, on the map. No account, and it expires so nobody is sharing location with the whole group tomorrow.

For the campus version of this, see meeting up on campus.

The night out checklist

1. Publish the route before you go out.
2. Count at the door you are leaving.
3. Say the next venue out loud, with a five minute warning.
4. Separated people go forward, never back.
5. Twenty minutes per venue change.
6. Agree how everyone gets home, early.

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Nearby is free on Google Play, and friends join from any browser.