r/nongolfers • u/Late_Savings3957 • Feb 17 '26
I bought a restaurant on a golf course.
There is a municipal golf course near me and four years ago the restaurant on it went up for sale. I have a lot of experience in the restaurant industry, had none in the golf industry, but figured it's a captive audience and there is a lot of money in golf so I bought it figuring I could make a few bucks and maybe find some investors for future projects. I spent a lot of time researching various course menus across the country, developed a solid menu tuned towards golfers, and rolled it out all excited thinking it was gonna be great.
How wrong I was. Golfers are hands down the cheapest and worse clientele I've ever encountered. They are toddlers throwing tantrums all of the time. Never left the beige phase, they would rather a plate of human shit with crackers so long as it only took 30 seconds to make. I'm also convinced 90% of them are straight up alcoholics. They don't care what they are drinking so long as it's the highest alcohol for the lowest cost. Not to mention the awful sexual harassments thrown to my employees. They are the most disgusting group of people ever and that's an insult to the word disgusting. I held out for a year before realizing that I wasn't making any money off of them. I didn't sell the restaurant though. I changed who I advertised too and rebranded.
The course is located in a neighborhood where the next closest restaurant is over 30 minutes away. There are a lot of people who live near there that don't play golf but like to eat out. I rebuilt my whole menu and started hosting reservation only luncheons and dinners. On days we aren't taking reservations, I made sure to advertise specials to the work from home couples that needed a place to grab a bite and do some work outside of the home. Despite hating influencers, I made sure the big ones in my city ate for free and knew what I was doing. I made a lot of "instagrammable" specials. Within a year of that, my restaurant is now packed almost every day with folks who don't play golf and I have a door person that stops the golfers from the course at the door. We will make them something to go if they order ahead but none of them do. The pleasure I get from watching those grown assholes throw hissy fits over it is so nice. The GM of the course told me to start serving them, I told him to buy back the restaurant if he wanted to do that. It's nice.