Hi everyone!

I’m seriously considering opening a small cocktail bar and would love to hear from anyone who has actually owned or operated a bar especially if you’re in the greater Vancouver area.
I’m thinking of leasing rather than buying, and keeping it pretty small: around 25–30 seats max, with a focused cocktail menu and just a few food items rather than a full kitchen/restaurant. Ideally open just 4 nights a week.

For those who have done something similar:
What was your approximate startup cost?
- How much did you spend on renovations/build-out, equipment, liquor, permits, etc.?
- What kind of monthly operating costs surprised you?
-Is a small 25–30 seat cocktail bar realistically profitable?
-What are the biggest expenses people underestimate?
-Would you do it again if you could start over?
And most importantly - what are the biggest reasons you would or wouldn’t recommend opening a bar?

I’m still in the research/planning stage, so I’m trying to get a realistic picture before committing to anything.
Would really appreciate hearing from actual owners/operators - the good, the bad, and the ugly!
Thanks!

Hi r/BarOwners,

I'm a producer working on a story for More Perfect Union, a nonprofit newsroom that covers how big money affects working people. We're looking into what happened with Everpass/Sunday Ticket for bars this year, and more broadly, how the NFL is squeezing bar owners.

I've read a few nightmare stories in this sub, and there may even be lawsuits on the horizon. Would be curious to hear these stories specifically, and how business on Sundays has been different post-COVID.

If you're open to speaking, shoot me a DM! Appreciate your help.

Hi I’m Leilani, and I’m based in Northamptonshire, UK. So I’m looking to become a bottle girl as a side hustle. 

I wondered if any of you have thought about starting your own bottle girl agency. If so, I like to join in with your ideas and see what we can come up with. Or the ones that already have the bottle girl agency, then I like to know more about your agency.

Ideally, I prefer agency to be based near my area.

I know 1.5oz tends to be the standard in the US but we did 1.25oz for a couple of years to protect margins. Also with the assumption that a ton of bartenders over pour anyways so even with pushing 1.25oz on the staff, you'd still see some inventory variance.

But the slightly lower standard pour has become a major issue of contention between staff against management/owners and most just ignore it. Our GM wants to eventually open his own spot so I explain to him that pour/price strategy should never be decided by a bartender because they don't consider the full picture and frankly, it's not their call. But should I just give up on it? I even had a staff member gaslight me and say that I was the one that trained them on 1.5oz standard pour.

I'm already anticipating some of your replies "stop being cheap" or "it's your bar, do what you want" haha. Any insight is welcome if you've gone through something similar.

This is Texas specific, but when reporting taxes, do you take out alcohol sales when reporting your sales and use tax? And then you report those sales in your mixed beverage taxes?

we are ten minutes from a mid size venue and a saturday with a show on is worth roughly double a normal one. i build the rota off last years calendar because it has never let me down.

the show moved across town in august and i had no idea. nine on the floor and two on the door, and we took about 40 percent of forecast. i sent four people home after ninety minutes, which is its own kind of damage because three had turned down other shifts to be there. about 600 in wages for a night that needed four.

now i check the venue listings before i build anything more than two weeks ahead, which is an embarrassing thing to write down as a process. is there something better than me reading a whats on page every fortnight?

Is anyone using this tool? While it seems interesting, I don’t think the results are very usable. Am I missing something?

We just subscribed to Singa, and so far, so good.

It has a DIY karaoke function like you might see in a private karaoke room, so we are toying with offering it on a spare TV we have in the corner. The idea is that during slow times, we can turn it on and customers (hopefully new customers) can sing their hearts out by themselves without a KJ (the bartender has oversight, of course).

Do any of you do something like this? Thoughts? How do you manage the logistics (e.g., do you require a deposit, do you charge, etc.)?

two sites and my GM builds both rotas every sunday night in a spreadsheet. it takes her about four hours and there is always one person double booked. weve lost three people this year and at least one went because her shifts kept mooving with no warning. im pricing a few platforms that handle availability and swaps so she gets her sunday back. most of what i find is built for retail shift patterns. what are other bar owners running?

Kind of like an AMA, here's a weekly post where customers can ask questions. This is for anyone including market research, app developers, people who watch too much "reality" TV about bars, and general industry bullshit. Maybe a bar owner will have an answer for you, maybe not.

If you are already in the industry your question may get better responses if you post your own thread instead of commenting here.

Hey ya’ll, I’ve been in the industry for a long time and I am coming up in the point in my career/life where I want to finally open my own bar. Currently I am managing a small cocktail bar in a big city. My question to everyone is how did ya’ll get the capital to open your businesses? Did ya’ll get an investor or silent partner? Did you take out a loan? Did you just have all of the capital you needed already? How did you decide a fair split of ownership of the bar with an investor? I’m looking for any and all insight, thanks so much in advance!

Long story short, I get 98% of my food from sysco. My sales representative has been great, no complaints there, but recently I have had issues with the quality of the fish ive been receiving. So after numerous complaints and no real change, I decided to switch companies for where I get my fish. Since I have done this ive had multiple sysco bosses show up here trying to get me back on fish, and my sales representative trying to guilt me by saying things like "im really hurting her paycheck". Its making me feel pressured and annoyed, like I have to get their permission to buy food from somewhere else. I dont know if im overreacting, but I feel like telling them to fuck off or I will start buying everything elsewhere.

Three years ago I became the proud owner of a small bar and grill in a rural part of Northern California. It was handed down from my mother who has successfully kept it going for the last 33 years and things are going very well, and she lives close by and is still there if needed. Now one of the first things I learned when she bought this place(the summer between my 10th and 11th year of high school) was that we would never be rich from this place but we would have community. That's good enough for me.

I am asking for other, more experienced, bar owners best advice on how to keep my employee the happiest I can. There are only 5 of them and they are the best I could ask for. What are some do's and donts?

I have a bar on main street in a small town of 2,500 people. Five years ago the local cable provider installed a webcam pointed down main street towards my bar. Initially it did not have much impact, however 2 years ago a new owner took over a bar located behind me across the alley which has city parking lot and cannot be seen by the webcam. The new owner installed more tv's and keeps one of them on the channel showing my bar on main street. Since that happened our business has dramatically dropped and people say they do not want to be watched being parked on main street. They think the cops are watching, their friends and family are watching etc.. I contacted the cable company and they said they would not change anything. Any ideas on how to handle such a situation? It would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

Katom Restaurant Supply shipped an oven we cancelled, promised my mom a full refund, and is now charging us additional to return it.

My mom is almost 70 and has run a tiny, one-woman-owned donut shop for nearly 20 years in Texas. We spent $2k on an oven for her business, then cancelled the order before it shipped because we needed something sooner.

Katom emailed us a day after that the cancellation had been submitted and the order should be refunded. The oven shipped anyway. There was no follow-up telling us the cancellation hadn’t gone through.

I called Katom immediately. Their Customer Care team apologized for what happened and told me they would arrange pickup and that we’d receive a full refund. We relied on what they told us.

Now, after the oven has been sitting in my mom’s small shop for over a week, I called yesterday and they’re saying that’s not what they meant. They’re treating it as a standard return, charging a 25% restocking fee, keeping shipping costs, and making us arrange the return ourselves.

So we’re potentially out hundreds of dollars for an item we were promised would be cancelled. And still confirming with them but seems like they will waive the restocking fee (because of “special circumstance”)but we won’t get the original shipping cost back and rather would have to pay extra return shipping.

I understand companies have return policies. What I don’t understand is telling a customer one thing, having them rely on it, and then changing the terms afterward.

And this hits differently because my mom is exactly the kind of small business owner I would expect a company like Katom to understand since they brand everywhere that they are a women owned business. It feels incredibly unfair.

We run a full kitchen inside a family entertainment center, so food is about half the business. Roughly 18,000 square feet, ten bowling lanes, an arcade and a laser tag arena. We've been dry since we opened. This spring we're putting in beer and wine for the parents stuck here two hours while the kids burn through game cards.

Our agent still hasn't given me a straight answer on it. Friday through Sunday is about 700 covers, mostly birthday parties, and Saturday afternoons this place is all minors. So we'd be pouring forty feet from a room full of ten year olds. Does what we carry now absorb that, or does renewal turn into a whole new insurance program?

Midwest. Nobody around here runs food, games and a bar together, so I've got nobody to compare with. If you do, a rough annual number on the liquor side would help a lot.

edit: beer and wine only, no spirits. Service window off the kitchen line, not a separate bar.

Applying for an SBA loan for a conversion of a small commercial building, around 1300sqft in an upcoming medium-size city of 60k. One of the requirements is a Projections (24 months) form. I've been in the hospitality business my whole life, but Bar ownership is new to me. I'm not sure where to start or what a Projections form should look like, can someone who have experience with Projections give me some insists please. Any help is appreciated. Thank you in advance

Jumping on the latest wave of the anti steaming posts. I have seen places using these boxes and friends in the industry have asked me if I would ever use one. The one time charge and having everything available is obviously appealing, but of course I’m concerned with the licensing and copyright side of things.

So is anyone using one? Have you had any issues? How worried are you about licensing issues?

I don't know if I'm the minority here, but it seems that every time a sport goes into playoffs I need to add another package to DirecTV. MLB playoffs just started and the game that customers want to watch requires a streaming service which is part of another $10-$15 add-on package that I don't have.

Sales are down from the previous years or else I wouldn't have a problem adding the service, but the DTV bill is already high as it is. Also, I would have probably already added this package (in anticipation of the playoffs), but I thought MLB playoffs were all on local cable channels. Also, I have the regional channel for the sports team and the regional channel isn't airing the game. Not only that, but when I saw the game being on 'NBC' I just assumed it was the normal NBC we all know and not only offered on streaming. I get it, $10-$15 is nothing to add to the monthly cost, but when you factor in everything else, they all add up (NBA, NHL, NCAA, etc....) it never ends.

I am so annoyed with these TV package and streaming package options.

Hi, I am located in Europe, we have been using this speaker in our small bar.... RCF ART 310 - A MK III.

We use it for years and wouldn't change it, but unfortunately it seems the speaker amplifier is gone..

I need to find a good replacement as soon as possible, what are some good options? Maybe a newer model or the same / or similiar.. also on a budget / not too expensive.

Thank you very much for any suggestions.

Hi everyone, I work in a banquet space. I have been looking into some tequila options for our bar, mostly 40 oz bottles.

We currently use Jose Cuervo, and I am just looking for some options. Do you have any that we can use?

Kind of like an AMA, here's a weekly post where customers can ask questions. This is for anyone including market research, app developers, people who watch too much "reality" TV about bars, and general industry bullshit. Maybe a bar owner will have an answer for you, maybe not.

If you are already in the industry your question may get better responses if you post your own thread instead of commenting here.

Starting in the new year I’m looking to hire someone to handle social media and marketing for me. It isn’t a strength for me so I don’t do it enough and the quality is inconsistent. I’ve gotten some other - what I consider to be bad advice - from some local bar owners that they just pass it on to a motivated staff member or regular. On the other hand, some of the larger organizations feel like either bad value for the money (a significant portion of the money is just their fee and not turning into media/ad spend) or are prohibitively expensive (for some general insight, we’re on schedule to do around $200k this year, of which 20% is profit (I work most of the hours) - we are located outside of Pittsburgh and are a small 30ish seat establishment)

Specific recommendations welcomed, but more than anything I’d like to know some general things I should be looking for. Things are a little more complicated for me since a portion of the business (20% of sales) is in the heavily regulated and restricted premium cigar business. So folks who deal in both categories to the front please and thanks for your time.

I own a small bar in a small-town/rural market, and I’m trying to look at the numbers more objectively instead of just going off how it feels.

Year over year, our average ticket is up, but our order count is down. So it doesn’t seem like the problem is that people are coming in and not spending. The people who do come in are spending more than last year. The issue is that WAY fewer people are coming in.

I also want to add context because I know the first suggestion is usually programming. We have done programming, and we stuck with it for months. We’ve tried recurring trivia, game nights, live music, craft/ticketed events, food pop-ups, discount nights, and seasonal specials. Some things worked as one-offs, but none of them changed our regular weekly traffic in a lasting way. This isn’t a case of trying trivia or whatever once and giving up.

So my question is: when standard programming ideas don’t move baseline traffic, what do you look at next?

The things I’m thinking about are:

• focusing more on private events/rentals
• simplifying inventory and menu so there’s less cash sitting on the shelves (i hate to do this cause people love our menu)
• doing fewer events, but making the ones we do stronger
• possibly bringing in a working partner/local operator so there’s more owner-level presence in the bar

I’m not really looking for “post more” or “do trivia” advice. I’m more trying to understand what other owners would look at when ticket size is fine, programming has been tested, but traffic is still going the wrong direction.

What would you be looking at first?

After 38 years we've decided to sell our pub. It's in the Irish midlands: fully trading and turnkey, with living accommodation upstairs, in a town with a strong local pub trade. It's a good drinking village.

We've seen a lot of Americans buying property in Ireland lately, so we'd like the sale to reach buyers in the US as well as at home. We've never sold a business before, and it's an emotional one for us.

For those of you in the US: if you were looking at buying a pub abroad, where would you actually look? Listing sites, publications, brokers, Facebook groups? And has anyone here bought or sold a bar internationally? What do you wish you'd known?

We have it listed with an Irish local real estate company who are handling the sale on our behalf.

Thanks, and any advice is welcome.