Opening a bar/restaurant

[HitHard69]

Assani, thanks for all the advice. Here's where I was coming from with the specials only for specific groups. My thoughts were that people will come to the bar no matter what if it's a cool enough place. The specific specials would serve to get MORE people into the bar on those specific nights. With something like college night, there aren't any real colleges within 20 minutes or so. One community college and a few smaller, private school with only a thousand kids or so. But I know when my college friends came home for the weekends, or winter break, etc... we were always looking for a place that was "college friendly." Most of the real bars around here are really laid back, and we got tired of going to Fridays and Buffalo Wild Wings real fast.

Big Lebowski night wouldn't be something thats every week...more like every 6 months or so. The problem we may run into depending on where we set up shop is that some of the counties around here have laws that all or your drink specials must run open to close...they can't start and stop at a set time.

I like where you're going with getting business at 5am, but in Illinois it's really hard to get a liscense to sell past 2am. Other than the casino's, there's only two places I know of outside of Chicago who can sell that late.

As far as Sunday being "Bears Day," well, everyone around here who likes football cheers for the Bears. I figured having that special would make us a great place to come on Sundays to watch the Bears, and having everyone decked out in Bears clothes would make for a cool atmosphere.

[Taylor Caby]

figure out who you want to serve. that to me is the most important thing. do you want to be a college bar? sports bar? family style restaurant w/some adults having a drink or two there on the weekends? young adult hangout? there are lots of things you can do but first you need to figure out who you are trying to attract.

since i'm a recent college grad I can speak to this group the best. best ideas are:

-food specials on off nights. have $2 (whatever cost is) cheeseburgers on tuesday nights. give kids a reason to go in and to just get people talking about the place in general. the 2.25 sodas and 4.00 beers will make up for this on those nights anyway. the word of mouth exposure will be great, too.

-get the girls to come. the guys will go ANYWHERE where the girls are, not vice versa. get the girls in the door by offering free promos for girls (ie groups of 4 or more girls get free cover + drink before 10pm, girls get in free, girls enter for raffle to win day at spa).

-if you have food, make sure it tastes good. i've eaten at a few campus places where the food sucked and I never went back, not even to drink.

these ideas should apply to the college crowd or to the newly graduated 20 somethings crowd. basically, anyone looking to save money and meet people of the opposite sex. i think this is the best crowd to cater to because they go out to bars the most and from what i know about the suburbs there are more family oriented places as well as trashy towny bars than places like i described. go visit some of the bars in lincoln park and see what they are doing. put one in your town and you will do great with the 20-24 year olds.

tc

[Taylor Caby]

one other thing - you probably wont be able to charge cover that is usually more of a campus thing or club thing.

make sure you have a lot of tv's if it is a bar. even if it isn't a sports bar, all the good bars these days have lots of LCDs around so people have something to do when the place isnt packed with people.

[Jay.]

This is obv depending on the area you're in but i can't think of any bars i know that have worthwhile promotions on friday or saturday since it should be tough not to be full on these nights anyway. I guess in the early stages you could do a great fri/sat promotion to get tons of exposure.

It also sounds like you'll end up marketing to the college age group. So cheap food welll burgers, video jukeboxes, all the sports and pool tables are your friends. There's a scream bar franchaise in England that just applies that formula, which all seem super popular. 'fancy some drinks?' 'yea some pool too/the games on/some food too so scream bar it is.'