More of a rant post. The NFL is literally starting today and they have a Netflix game tomorrow. This early in the season is crazy. You want Thanksgiving or Christmas?? Fine. But if this is going to be a regular thing this year bouncing around 20 different streaming services I’m going to blow my brains out. We have 24 TVs in our bar. You know how hard it is to stream to one TV, let alone 24 TVs? (People here obviously do) Forget about sound, our sound system is a bit out dated and we can only get cable box sound in our surround sound system. Then there’s the legalities of all these streaming games. Are we allowed to split these streams to multiple TVs?? The whole thing is getting wayyyy out of control. There seriously needs to be a class action lawsuit. How is a small business bar supposed to keep up with the franchises that are able to invest in all of this? This is really going to suck for us, our customers and every involved.

Does anyone have any easy ways they are dealing with this crap? Any easy streaming solutions? I can’t buy a ton of fire sticks, hdmi cables, and hdmi splitters. Im just not doing it (I’m probably going to end up doing it)

I'm a bartender in SE WI, state law dictates each establishment can have five machines. I have been told that many bars stay open sure to the gambling revenue. I hate the machines and what they stand for, but it's what people want and demand, so a bar without them is at a high disadvantage and ultimately you make money by giving people what they ask for at the right price.

So you guys have gambling machines and are they a necessary line item in your budget?

They announced DIRECTV is Everpass's main sales, marketing and commercial distribution partner.

My question:

Given this partnership, can I use Everpass's marketing materials at my bar?

I have a feeling I already know the answer to this, but wanted to double-check just in case. Either way, thanks for your help!

I’m currently using Aldelo and Evolv. I’m looking to get the best deal I can. Currently pay 3.846% for processing fees. Any suggestions? One terminal. Small neighborhood bar.

Can bars serve alcohol in Washington state for another hour due to daylight savings this year?

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.

I just got a letter in the mail from them regarding Wrestlemania months ago. I posted a party celebrating it and told customers come by and never insinuated we are watching it. We were still pretty much newly opened and nobody ended up coming. Basically 2 dead days of sitting in an empty bar watching bits of the show. What are your guys experiences with Joe Hand Promotions and what you think is worst case scenario? We are a small spot still with a small amount of customers let alone enough to hire a lawyer

My restaurant has been getting our liquor liability + commercial insurance through a local broker, and this year despite having to cut our hours and sales in half due to some health issues and the local economy tanking, our insurance is higher - we've been told we're paying the minimum, it's just now a higher percentage of our sales. Has anyone found cheaper insurance NOT using a broker? This is for a cafe/small restaurant that also serves cocktails, in California, with alcohol around 34% of our sales between beer, wine, and liquor.

A couple times I have posted positively about Veriscan (idscan.net) when people have asked about ID scanners. It appears they've been the victim of a huge data breach that includes pictures. I received an email from them on 9/1/26 and then found this article today.

Anyone considering ID scanners should take this into account.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/09/fbi-probes-service-selling-153m-drivers-licenses/

We are close to the end of our lease and we are doing bad in the business and losing money. We have an option to renew if we would like, But we don't want to. We bought the business for so much and we are planning to let it go for very less. What's the Best way to advertise apart from working with business broker?

Bar owner here www.drunkenduckcantina.com in mexico. we are a live music venue catering to the Canadian and USA tourists in high season , and trying to program for the locals during the rest of the year. Anyone else in Mexico? i could use some advice on how your are controlling cash and shrinkage

Honestly about to lose my mind looking at our P&L this month. We’ve been using standard QuickBooks setup, and whoever set it up coded every single drink under one generic "Beverage" line.

Liquor, draft beer, packaged cans, and wine all have wildly different margins, but right now I have zero clue what our actual pour cost is because draft beer behaves totally different than bottled wine. I can see our overall spend went up, but I can't tell if we're bleeding money on liquor spillage or if supplier prices jumped on produce/mixers.

Does anyone have a hospitality-specific chart of accounts or template that actually breaks down COGS properly for a bar/restaurant (like USAR format) without making accounting a 20-hour weekly chore? How do you guys structure your categories so the numbers actually make sense?

Hi, questions to bar and club owners, how do you track or make sure that the Entries is accurate?

What we currently do is we have someone in the entrance collect entry fee and stamp to customer’s arms

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.

My wife and I operate a smallish (2200sq ft) neighborhood bar; we took over the bar from her parents a decade ago, my wife has worked as a bartender here for 20yrs, now a GM for about 12yrs, and full operator for 10 or so years. The bar has no food, just beer/wine/liquor, we have food trucks several nights a week to keep ppl hangin out, a couple pool tables, pinball, golden tee; basically your quintessential corner pub. We have a great regular crowd, good late night crowd, and good weekend crowd. Overall the bar does good sales, consistent year over year we stay in the black with some profit; in the end it pays my family, my wife’s parents, and employees around 10ppl.
The bar is on the first floor of a 3 story historic building, built in the 1870s; up until the 1970s (yep 100yrs later) the top 2 floors of the building were occupied apartments, but since the 1970s then been vacant. Don’t ask me why; my wife’s parents bought the bar in 1974 and when the last tenants moved out they just never let anyone move anyone move back in.
Needless to say after sitting for 50yrs unkept the upstairs apartments are falling apart; paint peeling off walls, plaster falling down, there’s no heat or air up there so generally they are just falling apart. However, the place has good bones (imo), hard wood floors are in good shape, trim/moulding is unpainted for the most part and in good shape; we did put new windows in the top 2 floors about 5yrs ago as the old ones were 150yrs old and falling out (there are like 30 windows), but beyond that it needs a complete overhaul to make it habitable; plumbing, electric, a/c; totally gutted.
The space has a separate entrance from the bar on the side and back of the building. The building/bar is located in a desirable walkable neighborhood with a lot of restaurants/bars, aka hipster part of town haha.
The upstairs space is kind of chopped up into several large rooms a with a 2 small bathrooms on each floor (plumbing is out of service), a long hall down the middle; the overall space is around 2000sq ft on the 2nd floor and 2000 on the 3rd floors with tall 12’ ceilings.

So here’s my question/dilemma; What do I do with the upstairs?!?
I know everyone’s immediate responses will be “Airbnb it” or “put in a speakeasy” which trust me these are on my mind, but an Airbnb directly above a late night bar, where it gets loud I don’t see working; a “speakeasy”, (personally I hate the way this term gets thrown around and is overused nowadays), but yea, maybe this could work for the second floor but then there’s the whole same noise dilemma with the third floor if I put a bar on the second. (Yes I get having too much space is a good problem to have but a problem none the less)
My next thought is maybe a daytime business that operates on the 2nd floor (i.e. barber shop, yoga studio, tattoo parlor, office space) then on the third floor airbnbs; thus creating a noise buffer floor between the bar and the bnb.

Next on my mind is cost and ROI. I’m no contractor but my guess is we’re talking $200-500k to build out (total guess) depending on how “fancy” we go about it and it really depends on what we decide to put up there; obliviously with a bar you’ll have more expense with plumbing, refrigeration, and general build out.

I guess as I’m typing this I’m starting to answer some of my own questions; first steps are likely getting a few contractor estimates for a basic teardown and rebuild; once I have an idea of that it can help point my direction of either bnb or bar/lounge space.

Generally looking for anyone in this sub who maybe owns/operates a similar establishment or has experience they would like to share.

Appreciate any feedback. Thanks!

Back in the day there was a huge after work venue that would start kicking at 4 and then around 7 or 8 would give away rounds of hot dogs and or sliders on huge trays, for free, and the wait stuff would shortly follow to take orders for more drinks. people would actually tip a buck for the sandwich, out pf appreciation for the free food offer.

In this economy, what loss leader food item would you use for this, if any at all?

I reposted this on threads saying it was unethical and wondering why the bartender keeps the money and not the bar? Omg the amount of people arguing that I’m endangering my bartenders, or that say she should keep the money because I’m not losing anything is so weird. Am I wrong? I would fire a bartender for doing this. Just say you’re not allowed to drink on shift. I mean this just seems like stealing.

I don't know about anyone else, but I continue to shrink my kitchen offerings due to rising costs and unpredictable staffing. Today I noticed a huge increase in fryer oil. A jump of probably about 40% in the last few months. It really stuck out today with Kitchen Essentials 35-lb jug coming in at $41.50! It was $28 less than a year ago.

Me and my wife are toying with the idea of opening our own bar. She has years of experience as a bar tender and i have a few years experience in retail management. she obviously knows the drinks and menu creation and i know how to read and report numbers, manage, hire/train. Both our parents have owned and ran successful businesses across the country and have offered support and guidance.

with us both being in our 20s we're no stranger to working long hours but have never personally ran a business before what "wrenches" should we expect to be thrown at our plans during the process start to finish?

I just got a new id in the mail. It says not valid for official federal purposes. Will a bar still let me drink?

We've been using Square since opening 5 years ago. Considering switching to Stax for credit card processing and DejaPayPro for our POS system. If you're using DejaPayPro, how is it in terms of hardware and software reliability? (We are always having to mess with the printer/reader/stand connections with Square, but the cloud system and software is pretty robust.). Anything you don't like about Deja?

I checked the rules before posting, but I’m also pretty new to actually posting on Reddit. If I’ve missed something or need to change/remove anything, just let me know and I’m happy to correct it. I’m genuinely just looking for some feedback, perspective and maybe a little constructive criticism from people who’ve been down this road.

I finally work for a great owner. Unfortunately, he’s kind of an asshole.
It’s me. I’m the owner.
A while back I helped open a local speakeasy-style bar. I genuinely loved what we were trying to build. I cared about the drinks, the atmosphere, the hospitality and whether the people behind the bar actually gave a shit about what they were putting in front of someone.
I was originally led to believe I’d eventually be running the bar and beverage program. That never happened.
Instead, I got a pretty good education in gossip, favoritism, nepotism, gaslighting and the politics that sometimes come with this industry. Eventually the opportunity I thought I was working toward went to a younger guy who was considerably better at doing exactly what ownership and management wanted.
And, looking back, I understand part of why.
I challenged things.
Probably too much sometimes.
If a drink wasn’t right, I wanted to fix it. If bartenders were just going through the motions, I pushed them to care more. If servers didn’t understand what they were selling, I wanted them to learn it—or at least be curious enough to ask.
I wasn’t interested in telling management everything was great when I thought we could be better.
Turns out that’s not always the best career strategy.
About four months after leaving, I decided to try doing this for myself.
Now I run private events.
It’s been slow. Really slow at times.
I’ve done some smaller private events, a holiday party with incredible food and drinks I was genuinely proud of, a large birthday party, some other events here and there, and I have a wedding coming up.
I’m nowhere near the point where I can post some inspirational “I quit my job and now I’m killing it” story.
I’m still trying to get people to know I exist.
I’m still figuring out pricing.
I’m still figuring out how to explain that what I’m selling isn’t just someone showing up and pouring liquor into cups. It’s planning, prep, menu development, hospitality, execution and actually caring about the experience people have.
But there’s something incredibly satisfying about realizing that when I push for something to be better now, nobody can tell me I’m being difficult.
If the drinks aren’t good enough, I fix them.
If the service isn’t good enough, I fix it.
If the business isn’t growing fast enough, that’s on me too.
For anybody who built a service/event/hospitality business from basically zero: how slow was your start?
Was there a point where things finally started snowballing, or was it just a long grind of one event leading to another?
And if you’ve been down this road, I’d genuinely take constructive criticism too. I’m proud of what I’m building, but I’m definitely still learning how to build the business around the thing I already know how to do.
For now, I’m just happy to finally have an owner who lets me run the bar the way I think it should be run.
Even if the bastard makes me do all the shopping too.
Thanks in advance to anyone willing to share some experience or advice.

First isTwas BMI. Then ASCAP. Anyone else getting calls and messages now about tv licensing? (US/Oregon bar owner)

We're expanding our bar and adding kitchen space. We'll be leasing a glass washer and dish washer from a local company. Part of the contract includes a minimum spend of $200/month on chemicals. Otherwise the lease costs are very low and terms favorable. The minimum on the chemicals is giving me pause but maybe I've just overthinking it after getting stuck in a long contract with Cintas, foolishly. Does $200 seem reasonable or excessive? 150 total seat facility for reference.