SHHHH City Guides

Helping visitors, new students and locals discover Norwich’s finest independent cafes, bars, restaurants and shops in curated city guide

Problem

Norwich is one of the UK’s best kept secrets. A city overflowing with arts and culture, cool bars, lifestyle stores and artisan bakeries. Back in 2012 there was nothing out there that showcased the best of Norwich for visitors, students and locals alike. Making it difficult to discover the underground hot spots.

Solution

I came up with the concept to create a city guide to Norwich that filled this void. The guide featured a curated compendium of independent eateries, cafes, bars and shops. The places where the locals go, where me and my friends would go and the places that if you know, you know go.

Results

We printed 1000 copies of Volume 1 that featured 60 local businesses and were distributed across all the places that featured within the guides. We created a massive buzz around the guides and they disappeared from the stockists within a week. Due to popular demand we re-printed volume 1 a month later and have grown the guide in size and print run consecutively year after year ever since.

Today our latest guide features 200+ businesses, has quadrupled in page count and has been a continuous best-seller in Norwich’s two major bookstores. The print run has grown from 1000 to 10,000 and is stocked in over 200 stockists both locally and nationally.

Both local Universities (NUA and UEA) recognised the potential of the guide and used them at their open days as a tool to encourage prospective students to study in Norwich.

The SHHHH guide has cemented itself amongst Norwich's thriving independent scene of creators, makers and businesses. Becoming a key component in marketing Norwich to tourists, attracting talent, convincing students to study here and showing anyone who is looking to discover what the city has to offer, a good time.