Restaurants, bars & cafes
McNellie’s Group needed a more considered approach to music across a large and highly varied portfolio. With more than 25 locations and around 20 distinct brands, the challenge was not just scale, but contrast. Each concept served a different clientele, operated with different business drivers, and needed the atmosphere to work in a different way. Some sites had already worked with Altaura for several years through a lighter service, but as the group evolved, there was a clear need for a more premium and structured approach that could bring greater accuracy to the curation, consistency, and more regular updates.
Altaura developed 18 bespoke music strategies across the McNellie’s portfolio, creating a distinct sonic identity for each concept while building a clearer framework for the wider group. To do this properly, we block-booked consecutive afternoons, giving each brand enough dedicated time to understand its audience, pace, positioning, and operational goals, while also keeping a strong view of how the portfolio fitted together overall. Once the strategies were signed off, we moved into a tightly managed rollout, building and launching seven concepts a week and taking every site live within three weeks.
Understanding each concept
This was not a portfolio where one music style could simply be adapted across multiple venues. Each concept needed to be understood on its own terms, from who it served and how the space was used, to what role music should play in shaping energy, dwell time, and overall feel. Our role was to create strategies that felt tailored to each venue, while still bringing more clarity to the group overall. For quieter daytime trading, Chilled Jimmy’s brings together soul, jazz, acoustic covers, soft funk, light indie, and Americana to create a polished, low-key atmosphere that feels warm, familiar, and refined.
Strategy into rollout
The rollout was designed to be as disciplined as the strategy itself. Altaura created a rolling schedule of music build-outs and launches, working through seven concepts a week to keep momentum high without losing control of the detail. Each site switch-over was handled out of hours, ensuring that the move to the new service did not disrupt trading or affect the guest experience. This allowed the group to implement the new strategies quickly and smoothly.
Refining through feedback
Launch was not treated as the end point. Since rollout, the new approach has received strong feedback from staff across the portfolio, showing that the strategies were landing well in practice. Alongside this, Altaura has been collecting data at site level to understand how the music is performing throughout the day, allowing us to fine-tune where needed and make sure each strategy is working as intended.
Clearer as a group, stronger as individual brands
What made the project work was the balance between individuality and structure. McNellie’s did not need every venue to sound the same. It needed every venue to sound right. By creating distinct strategies for each concept, while managing rollout and refinement through one clear process, Altaura helped bring much greater clarity to the portfolio as a whole. For the more upbeat side of service, the evening playlist leans into deep house, indie electronica, leftfield disco, Italo, and soulful grooves, lifting the room with a slicker, more contemporary energy without losing its sense of quality.
Impact and results
The result was a clearer and more intentional music identity across the McNellie’s portfolio. Each concept gained a stronger sense of atmosphere through a strategy shaped around its own clientele, rhythm, and goals, while the wider group benefited from a more disciplined and scalable approach to sound. The careful out-of-hours rollout kept the transition smooth, and ongoing feedback and site-level data have helped ensure the music remains right throughout the day.
“Working with Altaura has been a great experience for McNellie’s Group. Before our partnership with Altaura our music strategy was all over the place. With over 25 locations & 20 unique brands, managing what our customers heard daily was difficult. Altaura created bespoke playlists across multiple concepts, ensuring each venue had its own clear character while still feeling right within the wider group. And over time, they have helped us fine-tune the music, as our brands continue to shift and evolve. They really understand how to shape atmosphere through music, and their attention to detail has helped us create spaces that feel more distinctive, more consistent, and more intentional.”
our work
By combining strategic thinking with careful rollout and ongoing refinement, Altaura helped McNellie’s build a music strategy that works both concept by concept and across the wider portfolio. The project shows how sound can bring clarity at scale without losing what makes each venue distinct.
