Starting your own business - A bar/club

[guids]

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meleader what is your idea for a place?


mine;
old school bartenders, white jackets and black bow ties, mahogany walls, but w/ plasmas for football season. Old school sinatra pictures, w/ good hip hop DJs. Caters to an upscale young crown most nights, but on sundays/mondays, its kind of chill, where you can sit and have a cigar. If I can find a 2 story place, I want nice pool tables, and real dart boards so I can get guys like Fast Eddy Felson to come in and gamble.

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This is an IDEA? Sounds like a day dream to me. Keep trying, maybe this thread will help you realize the concept is the easiest part. Don't tell us about concepts... tell us about IDEAS.

TT [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

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TT, unfort, right now it is a daydream, I am nowhere near close to getting to the idea part of it yet.


my 5 year plan-

1. Right now, Im doing bar and restaurant "consulting", I help in getting good rates for credit card transactions, set up computer and security camera systems, design websites, setup/teach how to use our POS software and quickbooks, setup bar/restaurant menus etc. I will probably keep doing this for a long time, maybe hiring a couple people in a year or two so I can free up more time down the road for my next step (I think I will continue working on growing the consulting business and hopefully use it as another revenue stream while opening the bar, basically as a co-ordinator and supervisor position though and not as much off-site field work).

2. When the POS firm is netting me a modest income from teh restaurants my techs are working with, I plan to ask my uncle to start me off somewhere within his company during the day, he owns 30-40 restaurants in the midwest/south/costa rica, learning the people/kitchen/corporate part of it for a few years.

4 years from now, I hope to be starting to actually come up with IDEAS and not daydreams as you put it, and start working on locating, financing, hiring lawyers etc. Opening the bar about 6 years from now, right before I turn 30.


What is the feasability though of running a small point of sale business, if I can get some cheap techies, and website designers and having enough time to open up a place, and keep them both going? Enough time in the day?

[slamdunkpro]

Wow, where to begin?

Quids – The idea is to find a bar owner that’s on the ropes or burned out. Most bars that are on the way down are not viable candidates for sale as they have no real value unless they own the property. Restaurant equipment, coolers, and even liquor inventories don’t have a lot of value and, if the business is on the skids there is no good will value. This is the kind of place you want to find. You don’t give the current license owner and cash up front, you just offer to take over and revamp the current facility with a new image; pay the bills (not the back ones) and in return for making the place a success again you pay them a percentage of the nets. 30K is enough to re-model a smaller place. We did a 10,000 sq ft facility for under 4k.

Matrix128 – here in the states a bar/nightclub can make generate a good living. The number of owners who have gotten rich off a bar/nightclub is very very very few. I’d say 95% go bust in 3 years or less.

AAAA
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i am really surprised at this. i would have thought that would be one of the best ways to go broke. it is a natural way for your staff to steal more, which means you can go broke quicker

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Fixed this one.

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i have heard it said that your bartender is entitled to 10% of the money that goes in the till if he is a really good bartender, but if he tries to take more, you should fire him.

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Bartenders aren’t entitled to anything. As soon as you believe this close your doors, otherwise your staff will do it for you.

Yeti
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Something that hasn't been mentioned in this thread (though has in the past) - don't underestimate how godawful it is to be sober around drunk people every night.

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Truer works have rarely been spoken

Matrix128
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If I was running the show I'd be happier to give my staff as much free beer as they can drink

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You’ll be broke in 6 months

Some general thoughts base on posts

One thing no one has mentioned yet is the location drives the theme Do you have a large space / small space? Will you be located on a street where there are a lot of bars/nightclubs or are you going to be a “destination club”. Bars in a bar neighborhood have a much easier time that destination bars where people have to want to go to that particular place and spend the evening there. As the DUI situation becomes even more ridiculous you’ll see less and less “destination resorts”.

As far as pricing and different “theme nights” goes remember – Bars are like church – The patrons fill a need in a social setting. They enjoy seeing the same basic group of like individuals with a common bond and doing/experiencing something that has a familiarity to it. Example – we cater to an 80’s rock crowd. Bring in an 80’s rock band -Warrant/Motley Crue/Jackyl; or even a cover band that plays 80’s and we sell out. Bring in a new, “trendy” group and you can hear the crickets chirping. Changing prices. Some Specials yes. Changing prices bad bad bad idea. Running a lot of discounts and specials is a sure road to doom. Soon people will only come in on “Special nights”

It may be cool to be the trendy “hipster” place but after the novelty wears off – you’re done. People want what they are comfortable with.

FYI for all – The profit margin for bars after fixed costs/taxes/payroll and product is about 4%.

It can be fun to own a bar, but’s it’s a hell of a lot of work, long hours, really hard on relationships and the pinnacle example of “it’s lonely at the top”

Still wanna own a bar? Take this quiz

Are you prepared to:

Work 16 hour days?
Have more “friends” whom you’ve never met than you can imagine.?
Resist the temptations of women, booze, and drugs, and stay sober all night ?
Deal with case after case of belligerent drunken idiots?
Manage an unreliable untrustworthy staff?
Close up & count out at 3 or 4 am, then come back in at 9 to order liquor/food/other goods
Come in the next day and unclog 4 toilets and dig out 3 lodged tampons (the cleaning crew won’t do this)?
Have to reinvent your business every 3-5 years (unless your really lucky)

Good luck!

[Your Mom]

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actually, i don't know you well enough eld...and wow...that was a scary thought. it is amazing all the stuff that just slips right by, but my kid is totally a different situation. i am not complaining about your question, just surprised at my emotional reaction.

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That's El D's humor. He's not serious.

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oh i realize that totally...his reaction is totally normal...i was just surprised at mine.

[citanul]

while i agree with almost everything in this post, there is one thing that i've see really not be true:

with respect to specials, i think that a bar that does specials can avoid "people only showing up on specials nights." how? have specials every night. or at least 6 nights a week.

a chain of bars in chicago (name of chain/management i can't remember, but slogan "eat well. drink better.") has basically the same bar in multiple locations, different names, whatever, and specials every night but saturday i believe. having specials one or two nights a week meanwhile, i can entirely agree will kill almost any bar.

out of curiosity, is the margin really all that constant? i mean shouldn't there be a difference between a crowded place that sells $12 martinis and a crowded place that sells $3 beers? similarly, shouldn't there be a difference between places with food and places without food?

citanul

[AAAA]

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Some Specials yes. Changing prices bad bad bad idea. Running a lot of discounts and specials is a sure road to doom. Soon people will only come in on “Special nights”


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isn't the goal of discounting to get people to come in on slow nights. having specials or discounts on weekends or holidays (assuming holidays are better than average days, and i am not at all sure about that) and isn't it reasonable to give good customers speical service and measure?

i hear you saying that you don't want any of the cash to go to the staff instead of to the IRS, and that is laudable i am sure, but i didn't think it was standard in the industry.

[matrix]

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Matrix128 – here in the states a bar/nightclub can make generate a good living. The number of owners who have gotten rich off a bar/nightclub is very very very few. I’d say 95% go bust in 3 years or less.

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I assume you are presently a bar/club owner - thanks for your comments...

Unlike most of the rest of the bar/club owning wannabes I have a clue [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] - I guess the proof of the pudding will be a few years after I finally open my doors. Tho I am actually surprised that you think as many as 5% make it. I thought it was less than that.

Matrix128
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If I was running the show I'd be happier to give my staff as much free beer as they can drink

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You’ll be broke in 6 months

nah.

The idea beng that they can consume as ,much beer as they can pour down their untrustworthy necks in the hour or so of cleandown - I don't plan on allowing staff carryout and suchlike. Staff caught carrying out are fired there and then. This system has been employed in two of the establishments I have worked for and they haven't gone broke. The beverage end of things in my club is also a secondary source of revenue - the primary source is door receipts.

My business plan is a slow burner. I am not even going to start opening anything until I have enough startup capital to build/renovate etc - and then another 18months+ worth of "bill paying money" set aside in the bank as a minimum.

My club idea is unique (or almost unique) and will take a good long while to build a customer base before it starts breaking even. Once I've built a customer base and have an established name then the whole thing will snowball.


Still wanna own a bar? Take this quiz

Are you prepared to:

Work 16 hour days? - check (yes EVERY day)
Have more “friends” whom you’ve never met than you can imagine.? - check
Resist the temptations of women, booze, and drugs, and stay sober all night ? - check (5 years ago no - but these days not a problem)
Deal with case after case of belligerent drunken idiots? - check
Manage an unreliable untrustworthy staff? - check - this ones easy - I used to be one of these people and I know most of the tricks in the book
Close up & count out at 3 or 4 am, then come back in at 9 to order liquor/food/other goods - check
Come in the next day and unclog 4 toilets and dig out 3 lodged tampons (the cleaning crew won’t do this)? - check (done this already)
Have to reinvent your business every 3-5 years (unless your really lucky) - notcheck - but hopefully 5 years after I start I'll be so successful I'll have a marketing dept [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[KaneKungFu123]

if you are a successful businessman then you wont need to own a bar to score chicks. plus, if you own a bar, you are going to be working your ass off, not sitting around like puff daddy does.