Running a Bar For Dummies
Overview
Run a successful bar and a profitable business with expert advice on every aspect of bar management
Running a Bar For Dummies shows veteran and future bar owners and managers how to establish and maintain a successful business. You'll learn insider tips for keeping customers satisfied and the business operating smoothly. With the easy-to-follow guidance in this book, you can navigate your way through the maze of licensing and permits, develop a business plan, learn how to market your business, and create a profitable establishment. You'll also find clear, no-nonsense guidance on dealing with tough customers. In today's changing industry and economy, you'll need to
remain flexible and adapt quickly to changing conditions. This Dummies book shows you how to do exactly that.
- Learn what it takes to own and operate a bar
- Stay on the right side of the law with clear licensing and tax information
- Discover apps, strategies, technology tools. and best practices for staying stocked and making a profit
- Improve your revenue, boost your online presence, spruce up your marketing plan, and find ways to keep your business healthy and viable
Running a Bar For Dummies is great for anyone considering buying or running a bar or pub, or anyone who needs guidance on running an existing bar more efficiently.
Read More
About The Author
Ray Foley is the founder and editor of BARTENDER Magazine. A consultant to some of the United States’ top distillers and importers, he is responsible for creating and naming new drinks for the liquor industry.
Sample Chapters
running a bar for dummies
CHEAT SHEET
Running a bar isn’t for the faint of heart. Besides the daily needs of running a bar — for example, what condiments to keep behind the bar and what to put on the menu — you also have to deal with the rigors of management, such as keeping your employees honest, staying on the right side of your state alcohol control board, and dealing with patrons who've had a few too many.
View Cheat Sheet
View Cheat Sheet
HAVE THIS BOOK?
View Book Companion Site
Access practice tests
Additional Book Resources
Articles from
the book
What bar owner wants to sweat over paperwork in the bar's back office when your business is happening out front? And more importantly, wouldn't you like to be able to get work done anywhere in the world with an Internet connection? The solution: Become digital-savvy.
Here are some top picks for staying on top of your bar business on the go:
Mint is an award-winning (and free!
Hospitality Careers
Sure, people often go to bars to drink, but not all drunks are happy drunks, and they certainly aren't safe, so it's usually best to cut off their alcohol supply or send people home before they get too intoxicated. Here's a list of warning signs so you'll know when to take action:
Patron is drinking fast.
Patron is smoking two cigarettes at once — one is burning and he's lighting another.
Hospitality Careers
Of course, most people are honest, but you can take measures to ensure that all of your bar employees are honest. Here is a list of things you can do to head off potential problems and handle them when they begin.
Check employee bags and packages when coming in and going out.
Conduct detailed weekly inventories.
Hospitality Careers
Sure, you need to have condiments on the table for your patrons, but you need them behind the bar, too! You'd be surprised by the things you need to have on hand when preparing food and drinks. Here's a short list of items most bar owners are often surprised to find that they need. Keep it on hand and tailor it for your own business.
Hospitality Careers
As a bar owner, you can use social media to connect with new patrons almost immediately. And you can keep the conversations going with customers in real time, turning them into regulars.
In case you're wondering, the term social media describes a set of Internet applications or websites that bring together a group of users who share common interests and interact with each other by sharing content and opinions.
Hospitality Careers
Taking over an existing bar is the quickest way to get up and running. The previous owner can leave customers, stock, and staff in place and hand you the keys. You have a built-in clientele and staff that know the bar, maybe better than you do.
You may pay more for an existing bar because assuming you buy a successful bar, it’s already making money.
When running a bar, there are several traits that make the bar more likely to be successful. Every bar owner injects her own personality into her place. In fact, many people start their own bar because they want it to be different from other places nearby. But most successful bar owners have certain qualities in common.
Even if you already have your menu planned, take all the following categories into consideration after your bar opens and you have a chance to observe what your patrons expect and which items that may benefit your business:
Appetizers: An appetizer is a dish that's served before the main meal in a restaurant. In bars, sometimes the only menu is an appetizer menu.
Hospitality Careers
The security staff is an important component of your bar’s staff. Club security or bouncers have long been hired for their larger-than-life size and their physical intimidation factor. Owners hoped that by hiring huge body builders, they would reduce the number of incidents because people would be afraid to mess with them.
Cordials are must-have items for your bar because they’re essential for mixing with other drinks to make cocktails or for layering to make popular shooters. Here is a list for must-have cordials for your bar (along with appropriate quantities, of course!).
Cordial
Bar Stock
Inventory/Storage
Apple schnapps
1
1
Banana schnapps
1
1
Blueberry schnapps
1
1
Butterscotch schnapps
1
1
Cinnamon schnapps
1
1
Cranberry schnapps
1
1
Lime schnapps
1
1
Peach schnapps
1
1
Peppermint schnapps
1
1
Pineapple schnapps
1
1
Raspberry schnapps
1
1
Root beer schnapps
1
1
Sour schnapps (consider orange, grape, apple, cherry)
1 each
1 each
Spearmint schnapps
1
1
Strawberry schnapps
1
1
Vanilla schnapps
1
1
Almond liqueur
1
1
Coconut amaretto
1
1
Melon liqueur
1
1
Orange Curacao
1
1
Veev (acai spirit)
1
1
Fireball (cinnamon whisky)
1
1
Chocolate liqueur
1
1
Tuaca (Italian orange vanilla liqueur)
1
1
Licor 43 (Spanish liquor)
1
1
Sweet tea liqueur
1
1
Grand Marnier
1
1
Cointreau
1
1
Triple sec
1
2
Crème de menthe, white
1
1
Crème de menthe, green
1
2
Crème de cacao, white
1
1
Crème de cacao, dark
1
1
Blue Curacao
1
1
Kahlua/Coffee liqueur
2
2
Amaretto
1
2
Sambuca
1
2
Midori
1
1
Hazelnut liqueur
1
1
B&B
1
1
Chambord
2
2
Irish cream
2
2
Southern Comfort
1
2
Irish Mist
1
1
Sloe gin
1
1
Anisette
1
2
St.
Hospitality Careers
Financing is tough for new bar owners. Leasing some equipment is possible. Assuming someone like a bank agrees to give you money, you’ll probably have to personally guarantee to secure the loan.
A personal guarantee is a pledge that you personally (rather than your bar or the corporation that operates your bar) are responsible for the loan, even if the bar defaults on the loan.
The term mixers is the classification given to the endless variety of stuff you add to liquor to make cocktails in your bar. The mixer itself isn’t alcoholic, but many mixers are manufactured solely for the purpose of mixing with alcohol.
The precise definition of cocktail is debatable. Purists claim that it takes more than simply mixing alcohol with something else to make it a true cocktail.
Hospitality Careers
If you're interested in running a bar, you have to get to know your alcohol control board so you know what you can and can't do when it comes to serving alcoholic beverages. Keep this list of questions on hand so you'll know the important things to ask your state alcohol control board representative while shopping for your bar or bar location:
Can I open on Sundays?
Hospitality Careers
After you pick what kind of bar to open and develop your concept, you need to create a complete plan to go with it. Create your décor, menu, staff uniforms, and logo to work together.
We definitely recommend taking field trips to existing bars to help you make your decision. So, grab your wallet and get out there and visit some bars.
Hospitality Careers
Coming up with the cash to buy an entire kitchen and bar full of brand-new equipment isn’t easy. Many owners opt to look into other options like leasing or buying used equipment instead of going with brand-new stuff.
Now let’s work through the process of getting the equipment you need, also alert you to the pros and cons of leasing and buying, and then help you decide whether to go with new or used equipment.
Hospitality Careers
If you’ve ever worked in a bar, you know that those who run the bar are there well before and after the hours of operation. If the bar is open from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m., for example, someone is probably there between 8 a.m. and 3 a.m. at a minimum, 19 hours a day.
That’s the best-case scenario. If a pipe bursts, a cooler breaks down, or a toilet backs up, the day gets significantly longer, instantly.
Hospitality Careers
When you start up your bar, get the best professionals you can afford. If you don’t know how to find good representation, ask around. Everyone will recommend someone. Make sure the people you hire have previous experience in the bar business.
Someone once said, “If you want to play baseball, ask Mickey Mantle, not your dentist.
Hospitality Careers
It may be true that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Not so for a bar! Great bar names evoke pictures in patrons’ minds. Sometimes they choose one bar over another based on the name alone.
People choose names based on important people in their lives, historical or fictional characters, heritage, or simply where the bar is located.
Hospitality Careers
The bar business is fun. Let's face it — that's why most people are drawn to it in the first place. When you hire your employees, you'll probably hire people you're drawn to. You won't hire people who repel you, anyway.
If they're quality bar employees, they likely are drawn toward the lively atmosphere offered by the bar and may even enjoy a drink now and then.
Hospitality Careers
Conducting market research is vitally important to getting your bar up and running. Market research involves keeping your eye on other bars in your area to figure out what they’re doing and why. You need to get a clear picture of what your competition and your clientele will look like.
Keeping up with your customers and the market doesn’t stop when you open the doors.
Your cash flow is simply the movement of money into and out of your bar. Money flows into the bar when patrons buy drinks. Money flows out of the bar when you pay the electric bill.
If you think keeping your checkbook balanced is a challenge, consider how tough it is when you don’t know what your paycheck (in this case, your sales) is going to be and when it might find its way to you.
As with choosing your bar’s menu items, simple is best when it comes to laying out (designing what the physical menu is going to look like) the menu. Make it easy for your customers to decide what they want to order by following these basic guidelines:
Choose formatting carefully. Use options like italics, bold, CAPITALIZATION, and underlining sparingly and only for emphasis.
Hospitality Careers
It may seem like a no-brainer to pattern your bar after the other ten that are on the same street, but it’s not a given. What if you could do much better by opening the only falafel-and-margarita bar in town? Okay, maybe that won’t work, but what will?
What type of bar clientele do you want?
Decide who you want your customers to be and make sure your concept is likely to appeal to them.
Hospitality Careers
Your bartenders and servers will be the first people to hear about something that’s wrong in your bar, so you need to give them some authority to make things right. Of course, you don’t want every complaint to end up in free drinks for a party of four every night.
But the easier you make it for servers or bartenders to make sure your patron’s experience is terrific, the higher the chances are that their service will pay off for you in the long run.
Hospitality Careers
The best way to make sure things go right in your bar is to decide what right means to you. After you decide, you can write it down, train your employees accordingly, and refer back to the standard when they need a refresher.
One of the most hands-on ways to get started is to determine your steps of service, which is a step-by-step list of what happens from the moment patrons enter your bar until they finish their last nightcap and pay their bill.
Hospitality Careers
Create daily, weekly, and monthly cleaning schedules for your bar to make sure all areas in your bar are cleaned thoroughly on a regular basis. Besides the obvious reason (most people prefer to be in clean and sanitary conditions), the law requires you to keep your bar clean to inhibit the growth of bacteria and pathogens that can be a serious public health risk.
Hospitality Careers
Starting a bar is not cheap. Whether you’re taking over an existing bar or building your own from scratch, you need money before you can make money. Many expenses happen only once as you start your venture.
You have to purchase items like bar stools, soda guns, and bar wells before you can open your doors and collect that first dollar.
Even though it seems like a place to relax and have fun, a bar is a business. And just like any other business, it ultimately must be profitable to stay open. In order to be profitable, you, the bar owner, need to know how much the drinks you serve cost you to make. The following steps explain how you do it.
Say you want to figure out how much a premium margarita costs:
Divide the cost of the bottle of premium tequila ($38) by the bottle size (750 mL) to determine the cost per milliliter.
You have to decide to run a bar; you have to decide whether it’s worth it to you to share your dream to make it come true. Having a partner is like getting married. You must love (or at least like), trust, and respect each other, and be willing to compromise. If you can get away without having a partner, go for it!
Location, location, location is the cardinal rule in real estate. But what does that have to do with how to run your bar? Ultimately, you have to choose which location fits your business, your patrons, and your goals. And remember, the better the location, the more expensive it is. You get what you pay for, so be creative and you can save money.
Hospitality Careers
In most cases, performers will find you as soon as they hear that a new bar is opening. Talk to other bar owners to see who the biggest draw is.
Naturally, you should audition performers or go hear them sing at someone else’s bar. Before you hire, tell them the rules:
Specify how many breaks they should take. For example, maybe you agree to one 15-minute break every hour.
Hospitality Careers
After you know what you need to run your bar, find out what’s available from different sup-pliers. Because food-service brands aren’t typically mentioned on menus, you have quite a bit of flexibility in deciding whom to buy food products from. No one knows what brand of canned tomatoes goes in your chili. Liquor is a bit trickier.
Hospitality Careers
Staffing your bar with quality people isn’t easy. In this business, you’re not just competing for the public’s drinking dollar; you’re also competing for the best staff. You have to sort through lots of candidates to find the ones who best suit your business.
Never has the hospitality industry had so many ways to find employees at all different levels than it does now.
Forecasting your bar’s expenses are similar to creating your home budget, only it’s a whole lot more detailed. When you forecast your expenses, you anticipate every possible expense that you may incur, but you hope to reduce those expenses and control costs as you actually spend the money.
For example, if you estimate your monthly home grocery bill at $100 a week, but you find an excellent sale, you’re going to save the money rather than just fork it over to the grocer anyway.
Your bar’s forecasted sales are the sales you expect to take in over a given time. Many people recommend you start your exercise in forecasting here. If you don’t know how much money you’re making, you can’t figure out what you can spend!
In the following example, you are shown a forecast for a tavern in the Midwest.
Hospitality Careers
In a bar, preventing intoxication is everyone’s responsibility. All front of the house (FOH) employees should feel responsible and accountable to check IDs, watch for signs of intoxication, and prevent drunk driving. Individual staff members may be added to any lawsuits filed against the bar if they were involved in serving a patron who was harmed or harmed another as a result of drinking.
Hospitality Careers
Your bar's grand opening is a great opportunity to get lots of buzz going about your bar. Human curiosity makes people want to try out something new, so opening your place is likely to bring in a crowd looking to see what you have to offer.
Do it right, and that crowd will continue and build over time. Do it wrong, and that crowd will be the only one you get.
Hospitality Careers
A successful bar is staffed by happy, hardworking people. Keep them in the know and constantly challenged to keep them satisfied. You can motivate them by providing opportunities for improving their skills and rewarding their performance.
How to grow employee skill sets
Your bar’s success depends on keeping staff members informed about your business, products, changes, specials, and promotions.
Hospitality Careers
Community involvement means your bar being a caring and contributing member of your community. Maybe you give money to charity, host charity events at your bar, or donate gift certificates for silent auctions. Being involved in your community makes people feel like you're a member of their world, like you're all in it together, and they're more likely to make yours a regular stop when they're barhopping.
Hospitality Careers
To make sure you’re selling perfect “brewery fresh” draft beer in your bar, you also need to pay attention to proper refrigeration, cleanliness of the dispensing equipment, and proper pressures.
Because draft beer is perishable, it must not be exposed to warm temperatures. The retailer (that’s you) must preserve it by providing equipment that will maintain the temperature of the beer in the barrel between 38 and 42 degrees Fahrenheit.
Accidents happen in bars. But the root of breakage is disorganization. If your staff is organized and working together, your food is coming out of the kitchen on time, and your dish area is tidy, you’re much less likely to sustain breakage than if everything is chaotic.
Breakage is an expense that you probably can’t eliminate, but you can take steps to control it.
Most bars are fully stocked so patrons can order their favorite cocktails, such as a gin and tonic, Crown and Coke, or margarita. But many bar owners create specialized drink menus to steer patrons toward unique beverages and cocktails that customers can only get at their place. Spend some time thinking about what kinds of drinks you want to be known for, and then create a menu to match.
When you are starting out on your bar running journey, simplicity is essential when developing a food menu. Ninety-nine times out of 100, your patrons aren’t coming to you for the latest in avant-garde gastronomy. Instead, they want easy-to-understand, familiar items they can snack on while they’re enjoying the beverages you’re pouring.
Although customers in your bar choose a beer based on its taste, you can impress them by serving an attractive glass of beer. How that glass looks depends on two things: how clean the glass is and how you pour the beer into the glass.
Following are a few tips for obtaining a clean glass of beer; that is, an eye-appealing glass filled with a beer with a clear color and a good, tight collar of foam.
Hospitality Careers
Garnishes, those little decorations that add color or flavor to a drink, can make or break a cocktail in your bar. What’s a Bloody Mary without a crisp and cool celery spear? Or a gin and tonic without a lime or three? In some cases the garnish defines the cocktail (the difference between a Gibson and a martini is the cocktail onion, after all).
Pricing is a nuance that comes with experience that comes from running a bar. Pricing is determined by what you can get, reasonably, from the customer, and by the area and the kind of bar your have. Of course, you’d like to deposit more money in the bank, but will Joe Customer pay you for it?
Difficult question.
The only way money comes into your bar is when patrons purchase your menu items at the price you choose. So you must price your menus correctly to cover your overhead expenses (including things like rent, insurance, and salaries), your costs (like the ice, liquor, and garnish) and incidentals like napkins, stir sticks, and tiny plastic garnish swords.
With more than 45 million users and 1.5 million businesses, Foursquare is perhaps the ultimate in location-based social media tools to use for your bar. In most cases, users access Foursquare through an app on a smartphone. The app then directs users to nearby locations that match their search criteria.
The users then check in when they arrive at a location.
The law requires you to obtain certain kinds of insurance for your bar. The amount of coverage you carry and the deductible (which is the amount you’re required to pay before your insurance kicks in) you choose affect the amount of your premiums (or the amount you pay for your insurance).
Talk with your insurance agent to find the best, most appropriate coverage for your business.
Hospitality Careers
At some point, your bar's business plan ultimately comes down to numbers. The financials section explains how much money your venture will cost, how you're going to spend the cash, and how you're going to build upon it. This section also offers your investors some kind of return on their investment.
Every potential investor will look at this section of your business plan, even if they look at nothing else.
Waste in your bar costs money, plain and simple. Waste occurs in many places: perishable food, utilities, labor, and so on. Spend some time analyzing your operation. Identify areas where waste occurs.
Kitchen waste is the number-one area to check. Almost everything can be saved in the kitchen (assuming it’s not spoiled).
These days, most suppliers can give you next-day turnaround on your bar order. It is recommended that you place orders for delivery of perishable goods, such as meat and produce, twice a week, once on Tuesday and once on Thursday. You should be able to order liquor once a week.
Because your business levels increase over the weekend, your Thursday orders are larger than your Tuesday orders.
Hospitality Careers
What would a bar be without someone to lovingly tend it? Bartenders make or break bars, without question. Your bartenders are key employees. They must be good with customers. They must project the right image for your bar. And of course, they must be able to mix a good drink.
Bartenders become friends, counselors, and godparents to their patrons.
Hospitality Careers
Depending on the size of your bar’s restaurant, you may be the only manager, at least for a while. But many people recommend that you get at least one other person to help with these duties as soon as you possibly can, just so you can have some semblance of a life.
Managers supervise employees, ensure the bar is running smoothly, and communicate with customers.
Hospitality Careers
As soon as you hire your bar’s staff, give them a copy of your employee manual with all of your policies and procedures. Have them sign a document confirming that they received a copy and agree to follow the rules of your place. Have them complete any other necessary paperwork before their first shift.
Keep these forms on hand for new employees:
I-9: Also known as the Employment Eligibility Form, every employee must complete the I-9 in order to work legally in this country.
Hospitality Careers
When you are setting up your bar, one thing to determine is your bar’s height. A standard bar height is 42 inches from the floor to the top of the bar. Of course, yours may be higher or lower, so measure it. Then take these steps to figure out what height stools you need.
Measure the distance from the bottom edge of the bar on the side where patrons sit to the floor.
Every professional uses the proper tools to do her job well, and a bartender is no exception. If you stumble on used versions of the following supplies and they appear to be in good condition, go ahead and buy them. Don't spend your time looking for used ones though, because the small savings you get isn't really worth the time.
Hospitality Careers
When you are setting up your bar, there are appliances that are bar tools with a plug. Here’s a list of appliances you need for your bar:
Blender: Most bars do have blenders, even though bartenders like to hide them. Because you will get patrons who want frozen daiquiris, margaritas, piña coladas, and other frozen cocktails, you need a good-quality commercial blender with some kind of warranty.
Games are extremely popular pastimes for bar patrons. Most require you to purchase or lease some equipment. When you have games in your bar, you can sponsor tournaments. Just think of all those people penciling in game night at your bar on their weekly calendar.
Traditional live bar games
The first recorded incident of playing pool in an American tavern occurred in 1775.
Name recognition goes a long way; just ask the politicians. All public relations (PR) for your bar is good PR (unless the health department is involved, of course). So get your name out there in front of people.
There are bartenders who put a bar’s name on everything, from the front door to the line where you sign your credit card.
Hospitality Careers
When you start to run your bar, you need to make an inventory sheet for both of your storerooms. An inventory sheet shows who is taking what items when.
Whenever someone takes something out of the storeroom, he marks down the time and date, item taken, amount, and where the item will be used (bar, kitchen, bathrooms, and so forth).
Hospitality Careers
In bars, the term distilled spirits is a catchall term for liquor with an alcohol content of 35 percent or more and a low sugar content. Spirits include liquors such as gin, tequila, and whiskey. If a liquor has a 35 percent alcohol content and a high sugar content, it’s usually known as a liqueur. Grand Marnier, crème de menthe, and amaretto are familiar liqueurs.
Hospitality Careers
People like to get a bargain. Sometimes the lure of the bargain helps them decide to visit your bar rather than someone else’s. Most bars try specials of some sort until they find something that works for them.
Cheap food and liquor brings people in the door. Period. But you always have to consider who it’s bringing in and how they’ll behave after they sit down at your bar and fill up on cheap liquor.
When you are setting up your bar, you could spend a fortune in terms of dollars and storage space to keep a slew of glasses for every occasion. Customers expect cocktails and drinks to be served in specific glasses. Although that’s all well and good, it is recommended you keep it simple. How much you’ll spend depends on the style of glasses, size, price, number, and so on.
Hospitality Careers
Your bar’s menu really dictates what appliances you need (or more accurately, your appliances determine what foods you can serve). Unless you’re intent on making food a top priority at your bar, your menu should really take advantage of basic kitchen equipment.
Keep handy a list of electricians and mechanics in your area.
Hospitality Careers
If you want bar patrons to use your menu, you have to make it visible. Many times patrons will order something they’re familiar with, without ever looking at your drink menu. Make menus easy to access for all your patrons.
How to place your bar’s specials boards
A specials board is a chalkboard, dry-erase board, or other placard that allows you to quickly write down the, um, specials each day and display them prominently for guests and staff members alike to view.
Hospitality Careers
People are in a bar to have a good time. In a restaurant, they may be there to actually eat, trying to get in and get out, to get on with their busy day. But in a bar, most people have come to unwind, relax, and hang out a bit.
A bar is not a necessity; it’s a luxury to be able to take time out of a busy life and take a load off.
Hospitality Careers
When you start to run a bar, don’t forget about the liquor license. Every bar that serves liquor must have a license to do so. Different agencies regulate the process in different states. Make sure you start the process of getting your license early in the timeline of starting up your bar. Depending on the system in your area, getting this license could take a year or more.
Beer is among the most popular beverages consumed in bars in the United States. It is brewed from malted barley, hops, and water. Yeast is added, which converts the natural sugars to alcohol and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide gives beer its carbonation.
Here’s a list of some beer terms you may have seen on labels or heard in beer commercials:
Ale is top-fermented beer (meaning the yeast collects on top of the fermenting vat).
Beer was among the first beverages served in bars and pubs around the world, and it’s sure to be the last. After you’ve chosen the beer for your menu, you have to know how much to stock so you don’t run out! Here is a list of what you need (and how much).
Type of Beer
Bar Stock
Inventory/Storage
Brands
Regular, domestic
1 case
10 cases
The big three brands are Budweiser, Miller, and Coors.
Hospitality Careers
A cost of goods sold (COGS) report measures your actual food and beverage cost percentages in your bar, rather than an estimate. It helps you figure out how much of your food (in dollars) turns into actual sales (in dollars). It shows you how much you’re spending on inventory items compared to your sales, which is the ultimate test of how well you manage your inventory.
Hospitality Careers
Yes, it’s a sad fact of life in the bar business. Some people will steal from you. Not all — just a few dishonest jerks. People are only as honest as you let them be. It’s your job to keep them honest!
The most important step you can take to prevent theft is to hire smart. (“Hire smart, fire seldom” is a good hiring policy.
Hospitality Careers
Websites are a must-have item for every business, even bars, these days. A website can tell people on the other side of town or on the other side of the world about your place. Its reach is limitless.
How to register your bar website address
Register your website address as soon as you choose a name for the bar.
When you inventory your new bar there are many brands to consider, and levels. Well liquor is the most basic, least expensive type of liquor. It’s what your bartender pours when someone orders a “gin and tonic” but doesn’t specify, or call, a particular brand. Premium liquor is a step up from call liquor, and super-premium is a step up again.
Hospitality Careers
Your local governing agency offers liquor licenses for your bar in different classes. What kind of establishment you have determines what kind of license you need and how much you pay for it. The class of license you need depends completely on what you serve, where you serve it, how you serve it, and whom you serve it to.
In a bar, as everywhere else, you will lose good people if you don’t pay them on time, every time. Setting up a payroll system helps keep you happy — you don’t have to hire new employees — and your staff happy — they get paid, which is why they’re working in your bar in the first place. The first rule of payroll is to open two separate bank accounts:
Operating account: Your operating account is your main account.
Promotions are special events going on in your bar on a not-so-regular basis. Specials and promotions are the second-best way of getting new customers (word of mouth is number one). Typically, promotions involve some sort of theme or event that goes on for a set period of time — a night, a week, or a maybe a month.
You have to decide how many televisions your bar needs based on your goals for your bar. If your bar serves as the local watering hole and you just want to keep a news channel on in the background, one smaller model is probably okay (but make sure people can still make out the images from a few yards away).
But if you’re opening a sports bar and will be showing the weekend’s hottest sporting events, you’ll need a couple (or more) TVs with larger screens.
Hospitality Careers
Despite the awesomeness of the Internet, the phone is still an integral part of the bar business. Even if people can find out your address, hours of operation, and drink specials from your website, they often still want to speak with a human and double-check the information. This call may be the first time a patron experiences your bar, so make sure it’s a positive experience.
Hospitality Careers
Customer service is the ability to satisfy your customers’ needs and wants. It isn’t just important, it’s everything! In bars, great customer service is more than just handing your patrons the drinks or food they order with a smile and a “thank you.” That’s the minimum. You have to exceed their expectations on a regular basis to keep them coming back for more.
When you start running your bar, don’t forget about wine! Wine is a beverage made of fermented juice of any kind of fruit. Most popular wines are made exclusively from grapes. In fact, most wines are named after the variety of grapes they are made from.
Although wine has been around for thousands of years, it’s been enjoying a new popularity in the last 40 years in the United States.
Owning a bar is an expensive and potentially risky proposition. As with any new business, you budget your costs, forecast your sales, and hope the sales exceed the expenses. But, to be successful, you have to do more than just hope. You need to do your homework and get your detailed plan together first.
You've probably heard "Failing to plan is planning to fail," and it's as true in this business as it is in any other.
Hospitality Careers
To be successful in bar or, really, any business, you need to take care of your business today, tomorrow, and years from now. One of the best ways to do this is by staying up on trends in the bar and restaurant businesses.
By watching food and beverage trends across all food service outlets, you can
Find great additions to your food and drink menu.
Most liquor will last and last (if you keep it in your bar at the right temperature, of course), so when you’re getting started, you may have more inventory than you’d like. Ultimately, you’ll sell it, but you tie up your cash in inventory.
However, food is a different story. Food is perishable. You buy too much, and it ends up in the trash.
Everyone seems to have their own way to track inventory. As you begin to run your bar it is important to keep track of your inventory. Knowing how much product you have on hand at any given time is essential so that you:
Can order product when you get low
Know where and how your inventory dollars are being used
Make sure that your inventory is actually making it into your menu items and out to your paying guests
Assess the cash value of stock on hand for accounting purposes
Most bars use one of these methods (or a combination of several methods).
In the world of bars and restaurants, there are as many ways to do things as there are owners and managers. Even when you hire experienced em-ployees, you need to train them to do things the way you want them done. Hiring experienced employees generally cuts down on the time it takes them to learn your specific systems though.
Hospitality Careers
Although no one likes to hear what she’s doing wrong, many bar owners overlook the immense opportunity that customers provide when they’re chewing you out because your place sucks. Granted, it doesn’t always feel like an opportunity at the time, which is why we’re telling you about it now, in a moment of cool, calm collectedness.
Hospitality Careers
If you turn on the television (or computer, cellphone, radio, or any other communication device), you’ve probably heard the term social media. It is something to make use of to promote your bar. In a nutshell, social media describes a set of Internet applications or websites that bring together a group of users who interact with each other, sharing content and opinions.
Yelp is a little like the Yellow Pages on steroids and a great tool to promote your new bar. Its brand promise is “Yelp is the best way to find great local businesses,” and yes, it has an app for that. Many people go to Yelp to find reviews and details about a bar or restaurant in order to decide where to hang out or dine that very night.
Hospitality Careers
In your bar, business levels and sales will change from day to day and shift to shift. Getting the most-current information available is essential to help you adjust your purchasing plans, preparation schedules, and even staffing schedules.
For example, if you have an extremely busy lunch that lasts well beyond the typical lunch time period (usually 11:45 to 1:30 or so), you might consider calling in an extra staff member or two to help you restock your depleted supplies, such as garnishes, bottled beer, and mixers.
Hospitality Careers
Ah, Facebook, it’s not just for pics from Spring Break 1999 anymore- use it for bar promotions. If you’re like most people, it’s probably the first site you think of when you hear the term social media. With hundreds of millions of subscribers, it can be a great platform for marketing your bar.
As a business owner on Facebook you can
Post pictures of people having fun in your bar.
Hospitality Careers
Every bar owner wants to stay on top of the Next Big Thing in cocktails. And it's easy to give this advice to bar owners: "Hey, watch for trends." But it takes another step to figure out how to actually do it. Follow these guidelines for staying aware of trendy drinks and techniques:
Read: Read everything related to the industry that you can get your hands on.
Hospitality Careers
Most areas have very specific liquor laws for bars. The government specifies when, where, in what container, in what quantity, and sometimes even at what price a bar, restaurant, or club can serve alcohol to its customers. These laws can affect how you run your business, like the equipment you must use, the extent of your food menu, and your hours of operations.
Running a bar isn’t for the faint of heart. Besides the daily needs of running a bar — for example, what condiments to keep behind the bar and what to put on the menu — you also have to deal with the rigors of management, such as keeping your employees honest, staying on the right side of your state alcohol control board, and dealing with patrons who've had a few too many.
Hospitality Careers
A business plan is a written document for running your bar that includes information about your business, your goals, your strategies, and your financial expectations. Essentially, it’s your road map or blueprint for creating a successful business, and it helps you figure out how (and when) your bar will make money.
Hospitality Careers
Unfortunately in bars, as other places, rules do get broken and consequences ensue, which may include terminating an employee. For your own protection, include a clearly worded policy in the employee manual on how you handle infractions, and follow it to the letter.
Here’s the standard sequence of escalating action to follow when problems arise:
Issue a verbal warning.
Load More Articles
Related Books
0:00
0:00
https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6630d85d73068bc09c7c436c/69195ee32d5c606051d9f433_4.%20All%20For%20You.mp3
Frequently Asked Questions
No items found.
