Success in Business involves focus, determination and drive. My advice here is mainly pertaining to a “Bricks and Mortar” operation but some of the same traits and principles can be applied to online business. Which ever direction you are heading in, it will require a great deal of your determination and focus on the goals you have set. You need all the drive you can muster to pull it off so be ready. Once you have set your goals and plans in place, it is time to buckle down.
In my case, I owned and operated a restaurant for ten years and a bar for eight years. It is a great feeling to have your own business but it isn’t an easy task. The endeavor will take an incredible amount of time and energy to attempt to be a success. You have entered into a great adventure. Both of these types of operations here are difficult in their own right.
Hopefully, I can be of help to those of you who wish to enter into one of these exploits. These businesses are extremely hard to build up and require a lot of dough sometimes. There is no pun intended here. Perhaps it is a play on words but in the restaurant trade especially, you need to buy in large quantity if you are able. You are in a world of franchises and mega businesses like McD, BK and Wendy’s. It is a big mistake to try to be like these last three. You can’t compete with them and shouldn’t try to. The franchises are able to buy in huge quantity and pay much less for wholesale than you would ever hope to. You may find it more favorable to stock the kitchen from the local Sam’s or Cosco. Your distributors rarely can give you a good deal these days although they may tell you about things on special deal or sale. Unfortunately, the things on sale won’t necessarily be regular menu items. Here is where you need to zero in on a basic menu that isn’t out of control. If you are smart, you will keep it simple. The items you decide upon, need to be excellent recipe items and extremely consistent once you make your selection. You need to serve food that is the kind people think about and want to return for more of the same. Ideally, your recipe is unique to you and not a copy of a neighboring establishment’s recipe. You should serve good quantity and good quality and try not to overprice your meals. If you can serve 6-8 dinner menu items and have great recipes for each of them, then that will work just fine. Maybe you can make great Lasagna, either a red variety or perhaps white Lasagna, serve a large portion and homemade bread. Do not use prepared foods from your distributors. Make it in your kitchen. Forget the microwave. Be unique. It is your recipe that people remember and come back for. If you make a great chicken pie, use only white meat and homemade crust. There again, good quantity, good quality should be your guideline. Don’t try to buy inferior products to save money. Inferior input yields inferior output.
You also should be in a good location. You want to be located on a main street or at least within the sight of the bulk of your traffic flow. The size of your place is up to you. You can have a simple decor but it must have a clean look and feel to it. Hire clean appearing staff. Instead of beauty and brains, concentrate on hiring friendly, well mannered workers and make sure they are honest above all else. Check all your references. Don’t leave any stones unturned. It is expensive to train and hire good staff. You want to be satisfied with your decision to hire a person and you want them to also be happy with their employment with you and stay for a long time. A lot of turnover is not good for your business or anyone else’s for that matter. Older workers can bring more ideas and experience so be willing to have staff from ages 20 to 60. A good mix will work just fine. Customers like to see all age groups in fact. Make sure you can afford to have those employees once hired. Check your books regularly and don’t get behind in your payments. This includes tax payments to fed and state. This is a cash flow business. Money goes in one hand and out the other. Don’t be fooled. Keep up on all the paperwork and don’t buy unnecessary items. Welcome to the real world of restaurant management. You can do it if you set goals, are determined and then don’t give up on your dreams.
As for bar ownership, a lot of the same traits are needed in an employee to be successful but your customers are a bit different and special skill sets are needed. Bar ownership can be a lot of fun but you shouldn’t be on the wrong side of the bar. You have a business to run and sometimes things can get out of hand in a pub or lounge so you need to be careful. Your bartenders should be friendly and cordial to customers but always aware of the situation at their duty area and throughout their scope. Never let things get out of hand. Be aware of your customers and know how to carefully shutoff a customer and be conscious of mood changes in bar patrons. Remember, honesty is a major consideration when hiring staff. A dishonest bar tender can do you great harm. Knowing how to mix drinks is one thing but knowing how to control your customers is another requirement. Even if you think you’ve hired the best, be aware of the feedback you get and watch your tallies carefully, compare other staff takes on similar nights and liquor costs accordingly. Be on top of what is going on at all time. That involves behind the bar as well on the customer side. After new staff has been hired, you will want to check things closely. Learn to bar tend on slower nights and be always prepared to fill in as this will happen eventually anyway. Keep a list of those who you can call upon with little notice. This can be former employees, off work staff or those with resumes currently on file. When you are not able to get replacements when staff calls in sick, it will ultimately be you.
Be prepared. My experience with the restaurant and bar had me working just about every position at one time or another. Maybe you will schedule yourself for certain jobs to reduce your overall payroll. This will be your choice as you make the decisions. Setting up a bar from scratch is still another chore. You can decide how many items you will offer to your customers. In this instance, the customers will help you decide. You may be influenced by what your regular customers consume. If your place is a fun establishment, you will soon have regulars just like the “Cheers” bar. At the start, of course you will have premium brands on your top shelf. These might be Absolute Vodka, Grand Marnier, Crown Royal, Frangelica, and other expensive selections. Your selections will change a bit due to the taste of your regulars. The shelf just below would probably have Smirnoff, Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Gilbey Gin and others. Below this would be your bar brands like Gold Crown, Allen’s, Popov, bar whiskeys etc. Similarly, you will decide what kinds of beer to stock and decide if you will offer draft beer. Your bottle beer would come from the big three. Budweiser, Miller and Coors will furnish the majority of your choices and your customers will help you decide what else to carry. Certain customers drink certain brands. As for draft, Bud once again is the most popular in most states. You might choose to try one of the popular light beers which could be a Miller, Coors or Bud product. A third or fourth tap, you might have to experiment with. Wine will be determined by your customers, price and taste. If you only have two choices, you would probably have one red and one white variety. Some areas are bigger wine drinking areas than others. This will be learned in no time at all. You won’t need to do too much experimenting here. Setting up your mixer station will be pretty basic. There will have to be lemon lime mix, ginger ale, cola, soda water and H2O. You will have spicket taps hooked up in back of the bar with lines running to your storage area where you will also have CO2. You’ll also have a separate system with CO2 for your tap beer. Once you establish a certain offering, you will need to have backups on hand to replace those that empty out. Keep a record of all your empties too. Try to determine the proper number of servings you should get from each bottle. After a while, you will be an expert at this.
You will compare your nightly tallies to the amount of liquor sold and you’ll compare to the take calculations with different staff members. Make sure the same drink is being served by different staff and a similar take reaches a similar tally. It sounds like a lot of work but in time it will not be an overwhelming task. The beers you choose to sell will be the major brand plus the choices of your customers. Depending on the space allowed, you will figure out all of this. After you determine your consumption weekly, you will decide how much supply to keep on hand. Your beer distributor will help you with this task. If you have a draft system, this is just another choice you will make with your regulars. You will stock what they drink and what is profitable for you. Everything will essentially be determined by space, coolers available, customers and profitability. What you think will sell doesn’t always work. As far as wine sales, start with a red and white and decide what your customers want. Maybe your market area is not big on wine but perhaps it is. Only time will tell and your additional research. Soon, you will determine what your busy nights are, when to run specials and the needs of your regulars.
You may decide to have a jukebox in your bar. These can be obtained from a local amusement company. The firm would furnish the music player and help set it up with speakers etc. Then you would get to keep a percentage of the deposits that were taken in on a regular basis. This same company would probably furnish pool tables, cigarette machine, video games or anything else that you thought you had room for in your establishment. There would be a split on proceeds. One thing to remember, you would need to have a lot of change on hand, just to get through the weekends. I know that I certainly did but the huge bags of quarters that I ended up with, helped to make change for my cash registers. Also, you will need coolers and ice machine to finish off your bar. Everything will depend on the size of your pub, bar or full Lounge with tables. If you have room for a stage and plan to have live entertainment that might include live music, this will mean a busy environment requiring more coolers, staff, stock and the need for some type of security. For my own operation, I had live music 2-3 nights a week for a long time. My most successful night of the week was on a Thursday night. You might think that odd but I established a popular open mike night that lasted for over two years every week. I had a house band that worked for me continually and at a much reduced rate.
My club attracted a huge crowd and lots of free performers that wanted to showcase their talent. Sometimes, there would only be a couple of extra singers and some weren’t very good. Other nights, there might be 2-3 bands performing for free in addition to my paid house band. There would be guitars, harmonicas, trumpets and banjos too. Most of the other competitors couldn’t compete with me on that particular night. Sometimes, I would go to the mike myself and read off raffles for tee shirts and hats that I got from my distributors. The beer salesmen always could get you mirrors, lights, shirts and caps. Especially during the holidays and during sporting events like the Super Bowl, they would have posters, banners, table tents and other novelties. The neighborhood competitors would schedule entertainment only on the weekends. Bands ask much more on a Friday or Saturday as you know.
Like in the food business, a bar needs gimmicks, too. The slow nights for me happened to be Sun, Mon and Tues. On these nights I ran specials. Every Tues. night, I gave away a couple of large pizzas as a door prize and announced a winner later in the evening. It would keep people around longer. They didn’t want to miss the drawing and would come back later if they went off to another place. They never knew exactly when I was going to pick a number from the hat. Monday night, I might have margaritas on special or something else. You have to be creative all the time in these types of businesses. You have to always be aware of the bottom line and stay profitable if at all possible. If you follow these guidelines, I’m sure you can be the success you know you can be.
John Sprague is an American currently working in the Mideast. He enjoys writing and working on his websites in his free time. He has a new site at http://marketingkindreds.com
His website has photos of the Mideast and contains marketing articles.
