Nightlife in Gloucester has improved in recent years and is due to get better still. The leisure quarter at Gloucester Quays, with a new cinema, restaurants and bars, has given our residents more options and stemmed the flow of people going elsewhere for a night out.

Many new bars and restaurants opening throughout the city
More recently, the new Greek on the Docks restaurant has opened at Merchants Quay and is proving popular, with Grillshed – a new healthy eating concept backed by Gloucester Rugby stars – due to open shortly next door. Also at the Docks, several new restaurants are planned in the long-term vacant building next to the Soldiers of Gloucestershire Museum and a new wine bar is opening in the Barge Arm. More bars and restaurants are planned at Bakers Quay too.

Elsewhere in the city, the former Wetherspoons Water Poet pub in Eastgate Street has been refurbished and rebranded as “The Doctors” and Butlers has plans to extend into the former Zest Bar to create a larger VIP area called Bar 103.

Providing student accommodation
Work is also now starting on the former Jumpin’ Jaks building in Brunswick Road (an old haunt of mine) after many years of lying empty. The plan is for a club catering for the premium end of the market with a bar and restaurant on the ground floor with student accommodation above.

Westgate Street too is seeing its share of the action with a specialist Thai restaurant replacing the Shahi Balti and a new takeaway business on the corner of Three Cocks Lane. Enterprise Inns have submitted plans for an overhaul of The Fountain. The Sword Inn (formerly The Union) also seems to be doing well.

Drawing in the customers to support new outlets
Having lots of evening activities as we have seen this summer, and more people living in the city centre, helps to draw in the customers to support these new outlets.

So there is no shortage of new places to go to spend your evening in Gloucester and I’d encourage you to give them a try. But don’t forget to support our long-established businesses too.