Forget about the fact that the place under discussion is a bar for a second. The important bit is getting off-campus together outside of work hours.
Sure, you can talk about these things in team-wide meetings. You can also have formal meetings specifically to periodically re-evaluate various bits and pieces of your workplace, not to mention regular townhall meetings, "working" meetings (which are either a symbol of overwork/overplanning or of lack of trust), standup meetings, backlog grooming meetings, retrospectives of all kinds. Back in the military we had a joke about having a retrospective meeting to discuss how the last retrospective meeting went. Each one of these meetings can be thought of as being "productive" in some way, but soon enough, you see that you're spending 80%+ of your time in meetings and nothing is getting done.
Off-campus get-togethers intentionally dismiss any aims of productivity, instead trying to help the team gel. Which is incredibly important.
If your team can't adapt to the preferences of the team members not to go to a bar, then that's not a problem with bars, that's a problem with your team (and more specifically, the person leading it). If you join a team which cannot agree on a common-interest, enjoyable, occasional evening venue, then that team has either grown too large and needs to be split up, or management screwed up by putting people together who are deeply incompatible with each other and need to be on different teams which are supportive in their own ways so that each can reach their full potential separately.
Sure, you can talk about these things in team-wide meetings. You can also have formal meetings specifically to periodically re-evaluate various bits and pieces of your workplace, not to mention regular townhall meetings, "working" meetings (which are either a symbol of overwork/overplanning or of lack of trust), standup meetings, backlog grooming meetings, retrospectives of all kinds. Back in the military we had a joke about having a retrospective meeting to discuss how the last retrospective meeting went. Each one of these meetings can be thought of as being "productive" in some way, but soon enough, you see that you're spending 80%+ of your time in meetings and nothing is getting done.
Off-campus get-togethers intentionally dismiss any aims of productivity, instead trying to help the team gel. Which is incredibly important.
If your team can't adapt to the preferences of the team members not to go to a bar, then that's not a problem with bars, that's a problem with your team (and more specifically, the person leading it). If you join a team which cannot agree on a common-interest, enjoyable, occasional evening venue, then that team has either grown too large and needs to be split up, or management screwed up by putting people together who are deeply incompatible with each other and need to be on different teams which are supportive in their own ways so that each can reach their full potential separately.