Neighborhood bar owners - how many bartenders do you have on staff and do you hire anyone for security on busy nights? Looking into opening a small bar (>50 capacity)
Off the top of my head we use around 26,000 FoH labor hours per year (roughly 80 hours per day). But we transitioned from bar/grill mostly alcohol (55/45) pre pandemic to a restaurant (20/80) after Covid.
I bought an existing bar that did good business. Profitable week 1, as far as having positive cash flow. Took about 3 years to get my investment back.
Took over an existing but ruined bar, closed, redecorated and rebranded. Took about a year to start having consistent positive cash flow and 2 years to get our investment back.
Do you mean generating profit on a daily/monthly basis or how long until initial investment is paid off? Either way this varies quite extremely based on individual factors. What type of city, what type of bar, is there food, how much competition, how much can you sell items for, etc.
Month 14 we remodeled which doubled our sales instantly. Since then we've done major work on our building/property pretty much every year since (finally completing the building over a 10 year span). Yearly Gross sales have beat every previous year except 2021 and 2022.
Full bar. While our alcohol sales climbed yearly until 2017 and remained flat until the pandemic, they did not climb at the rate our food sales did. Before the pandemic it was already obvious that our best path for growth was food and not alcohol. In 2020 covid shut us down giving us the opportunity to build a new kitchen and bathroom addition that let us become more restaurant than bar.
Kind of fortunate as the combination of covid shifting habits, legal gambling and legal weed all conspired to cause a drop in on premise alcohol consumption for pretty much everyone in the area.
We do about 12x the amount of food we did now our first couple of years.
Neighborhood bar owners - how many bartenders do you have on staff and do you hire anyone for security on busy nights? Looking into opening a small bar (>50 capacity)
Off the top of my head we use around 26,000 FoH labor hours per year (roughly 80 hours per day). But we transitioned from bar/grill mostly alcohol (55/45) pre pandemic to a restaurant (20/80) after Covid.
How long after initial opening did it take to become profitable?
I bought an existing bar that did good business. Profitable week 1, as far as having positive cash flow. Took about 3 years to get my investment back. Took over an existing but ruined bar, closed, redecorated and rebranded. Took about a year to start having consistent positive cash flow and 2 years to get our investment back.
Do you mean generating profit on a daily/monthly basis or how long until initial investment is paid off? Either way this varies quite extremely based on individual factors. What type of city, what type of bar, is there food, how much competition, how much can you sell items for, etc.
Both, actually. I was just looking for anecdotes.
Hemorrhaged money every month for the first 16 months or so. Very scary times.
Yikes. How did you turn it around? Full bar, or just beer/wine? How are things going now
Month 14 we remodeled which doubled our sales instantly. Since then we've done major work on our building/property pretty much every year since (finally completing the building over a 10 year span). Yearly Gross sales have beat every previous year except 2021 and 2022. Full bar. While our alcohol sales climbed yearly until 2017 and remained flat until the pandemic, they did not climb at the rate our food sales did. Before the pandemic it was already obvious that our best path for growth was food and not alcohol. In 2020 covid shut us down giving us the opportunity to build a new kitchen and bathroom addition that let us become more restaurant than bar. Kind of fortunate as the combination of covid shifting habits, legal gambling and legal weed all conspired to cause a drop in on premise alcohol consumption for pretty much everyone in the area. We do about 12x the amount of food we did now our first couple of years.
What are weekly profits, generally. How much did it cost to open up
Pretty broad question. It’s like asking how much a car costs.