In New York — a city with endless places to grab a drink — it can be remarkably hard to find the right place to grab a drink.
“‘Where shall we go’ should not be such a hard question to answer at the end of a really nice dinner in a city like New York,” says Margot Hauer-King. “For whatever reason there suddenly was this gap of an answer to that question.”
To fill that gap, Hauer-King and Emmet McDermott have opened People’s, a cocktail lounge and art space set within a historic Greenwich Village townhouse.
“You hit your late 20s and all of a sudden those dive bars and random nightclubs downtown kind of lose their appeal,” says McDermott. “My feeling was that New York coming out of the pandemic had lost those really fun, boutique, downtown velvet-rope experiences in the vein of Bungalow 8 or Beatrice,” he adds. “Now that New Yorkers are ready to go out again, there is that need to have a place to pop into; a local place where the staff knows you, it’s intimate, it’s small, it’s special — and it’s really, really fun.”
Officially open to the public this week, People’s pushes back against the membership model that has grown popular in recent years, with reservations available by referral. In addition to a soft opening for friends and family, the space hosted a private birthday party for Ivy Getty last weekend.
“Everyone that walked in last week felt like they were really rooting for us and the staff and for the experience, which made it feel really special,” says Hauer-King, adding that the People’s vision was driven by community-building. “Watching every table know each other and spot each other across the room was definitely a highlight of the week.”
From the People’s menu.
Courtesy of Brian Bills
People’s has been two years in the making, but McDermott and Hauer-King linked up on…