Dry hire means the building and nothing else. No catering, no bar, no furniture beyond whatever happens to be there, no staff and frequently no licence. It is the lowest headline figure in this market and the one that most often ends up costing more than the inclusive venue next door, because everything a venue would have done is now a supplier you have to find, brief and pay.
Ask three suppliers for a price
The list you are now responsible for
Catering and a kitchen or a mobile one; a bar, its stock, its staff and its licence; tables, chairs, linen, crockery and glassware; a cloakroom and somebody to run it; lighting and sound; a first aider and a stewarding plan if the numbers are large; waste removal; and the cleaning the contract requires at the end. Each of those is a separate hire with its own minimum, and the minimums do not scale down. That is the arithmetic that decides whether dry hire is cheap.
When dry hire is genuinely the right answer
When the guest count is large enough that a per head package would be punishing; when you already have a caterer you want and the inclusive venues will not let them in; when the building is the point and no conventional venue is like it; or when somebody involved genuinely enjoys producing events. It is the wrong answer for a small party, for a tight budget with no time, and for anybody who will be running the day themselves and would rather be at their own event.
Licensing is the part that catches people
A dry hire space may or may not hold a licence to sell alcohol or to provide regulated entertainment, and where it does not, you or your bar supplier will need a temporary notice, applied for in advance with a statutory notice period. Charging for drinks at all, including through a ticket price, is selling. Ask the venue for its licence and its conditions in writing at the enquiry stage, because it decides both the paperwork and the finish time.
Venues for hire near me, venues to hire, and what each of those phrases means in practice
The phrase covers three different products. A venue for hire with nothing in it is dry hire and everything below is yours. A room hire inside a working building, a pub upstairs or a hotel suite, usually includes furniture and staff and a bar that is theirs. And private room hire in a restaurant is a minimum spend wearing a hire fee's name. Ask which of the three you are being quoted before comparing two figures, because the same number means three different amounts of work.
Dry hire venues London and function room hire London: the two ends of one city market
London runs both extremes harder than anywhere else. Its dry hire stock is warehouses, arches and galleries where the fee is the smaller half of the day once production and staffing are priced. Its function room hire is pubs, hotels and members' clubs where the room comes with a bar minimum and almost no work. There is very little in between, so the decision is made early and is really a decision about how much of the day you want to run yourselves.
A dry hire venue london lets on a different calendar from the rest of the country
London's empty-room market runs on the working week rather than the weekend. A great deal of the stock is space whose weekday trade is offices, studios, galleries and members' clubs, so a Saturday is frequently the cheapest day rather than the dearest, and August and the fortnight after Christmas are softer than any discount you could negotiate. The corollary is that a Thursday evening, which is when the corporate market wants the same rooms, is the hardest night in the city to hire cheaply. Ask for the rate on three different days before assuming the weekend costs more.
Questions people ask about dry hire
What does dry hire include?
The building and the hours, and usually nothing else. Catering, bar, licence, furniture, staff, cleaning and waste are all yours, and each is a hire with its own minimum.
Is dry hire cheaper?
On the headline always, on the total only above a certain size. Below roughly the point where a per head package starts to hurt, an inclusive venue usually wins once the hire list is added up.
Do I need a licence for a dry hire party?
If drink is being sold in any way, including through a ticket price, then yes unless the venue holds its own. A temporary notice has to be applied for in advance with a statutory notice period.
What does party room hire include, and what do party venues hire out separately?
A party room hire normally includes the room, its furniture, its staff and its licence, and excludes catering, entertainment and anything decorative. What is hired out separately is everything that arrives on a van: sound, lighting, extra furniture, a photo booth, linen. Ask for the two lists rather than for one number.
Are Edinburgh venues for hire priced like the rest of Scotland?
No, and August is most of the reason. A city that can sell its rooms at festival rates for a month prices the rest of its year against that, so a room an hour outside is a different market for the same guest list. Ask what the same date costs in February.
Is private room hire the same thing as dry hire?
No, and the two are frequently confused in listings. Private room hire normally means a room inside a working building with its furniture, its staff and its licence, so almost nothing arrives on a van. Dry hire means the room and nothing else. Ask which one the figure covers before comparing it with anything.