Are you a bar owner?
Monday, August 17th, 2009 at
4:52 pm
My friend and I are in the process of opening a bar. We have our location and equiptment including bar top, cooler, tables, stools, glasses, and chairs. We are in the process of writing a business plan to gain funding.
Do you have any wise words of advice or wish you did something differently when you started?
The bar we are opening is in a town of 6000 that only has 1 other bar in town.
Tagged with: chairs • glasses • opening a bar • stools • wise words • words of advice • writing a business plan
Filed under: Your Community Center
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Be careful when giving (if you give) discounts or freebies to friends and aquantainces. Because they may just end up expecting it. You can start to lose a lot of money if you are constantly undercutting yourself. You really have to know what everything costs you and how much profit you are making on each item. For example… maybe you drop a bottle of wine. Maybe that bottle of wine cost you wholesale $3 and each bottle has maybe, 7 glasses of wine inside. If you sell each glass of wine for $4 you are losing $25 dollars in profit, rather than just the $3 that you bought the bottle for.
Maybe that’s elementary for you guys, I just thought I’d mention it. Keep a very firm grip on the money that comes in and goes out, and then the alarm bells will ring very loud, very clear and very early if you are ever in danger of going into the red.
But also remember to relax and learn to have fun with the customers. You dont have to be drunk with them, but also its nice to have that friendly relaxed report with them, rather than the stiff detached aspect of the professional businessperson.
Be careful with furniture and decorations, they need to be sturdy, cleanable and functionable. Maybe your chairs could have been recommended by an interior designer and be absolutely gorgeous, but maybe they may be really uncomfortable.
And lastly, pick your staff carefully and then be good to your staff, a waiter/waitress sometimes makes or breaks a business. Sometimes its not about good service or not, its who you want, as a customer, to spend your evening with….someone slow but lovely and bubbly and makes you laugh, or a quick but sleeely and cranky biatch?
Hope this has helped.
no
in away dont that say something if it only has 1 other bar in its town .im not trying to put you off your idea .you got to think are you going to bring the people in too actually drink
make sure to keep the beer cold and lots of it..specially on happy hour or special functions..there is nothings worse than to drink a hot beer because they run out of stock and had to run for more… therefore not properly chilled.