Buying a beer bar

[krml]

shygye said:

You should work as an employee in a bar for a few months in your home country. See what the biz is really like.

 

I agree with SG on this one. Believe me it gets old fast. Dealing with drunken assholes every night can wear thin quick. I have first hand experience working in bars from bartending, stocking, working the door (me weighing all of 165 lbs.), and managing. If the customers don't get on your nerves the staff will eventually.

 

It can be fun at first, but once you get to see how shallow most of the people are who hang out in the bars on a regular basis you lose your enthusiam pretty quick. This includes staff as well. They are a fickle bunch.

 

I have made a lot of friends and had good times but after a while it is the same mundane thing going to work in a bar. Maybe it will be for you but seriously consider what SG said before you get into the business. You might not like it.

[JJsushi]

I would look at it in these terms; if you have everthing to lose then don't even bother investing in a bar, if you have nothing to lose, then I say go for it.

[Redbaron]

Thanks for the responses guys, just tossing a few ideas around that's all. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.

[thalenoi]

even teaching English is a better bet than being a bar owner

[Zorro]

There are plenty of legit businesses that would be better options that the risky bar business.

[Lord Toad]

Just one quick final note. I am officially credited with 15+ years in the bar/restaurant business. People who do well are people who get into the rhythm of the work. Effectively it is a 24 hour job as working lunchtimes and evenings to closing time mean no real leisure time. As a manager I used to start work at 9 am and except for a couple of hours in late afternoon when I usually slept it was go until an hour after closing time. I used to get one evening off a week if I could be bothered to take it. It is a lifestyle and most of my friends were in the business.

Running a successful bar in Thailand is not that different. Mornings doing admin work, afternoons buying and evenings working to close. The reality is that the longer the bar is open the more money you take. All the crap about ?it is not worth opening? mean ?I am too lazy to open.? Or my staff are.

Own a bar think lifestyle!

[kwai_hai]

thalenoi said:

even teaching English is a better bet than being a bar owner

 

Now we are moving from fact to fiction.............

[samak]

of course being a bar owner at SC is better than teaching english!

any input from SC? bars available there?

 

Loard Toad! what kind of venue you were involved with in LOS?

[torrenova]

Bars make the majority of their money from repeat business. That comes in the form of people returning during the same holiday and also returning in subsequent holidays. Locals and expats are also a useful source of regular income. the difficulty is getting people to come back and to achieve that, you need to offer something attractive and I don't mean the girls !

 

Too many people think it is as simple as buying beer, sticking on a mark up and selling it. That's the easy part, the difficulty is getting the people to buy it.

 

Go ask the guys what sort of girl makes a bar the most money and I bet the majority say a strikingly pretty girl. Bollocks, she'll be barfined each night and she'll make you nothing. The best girls are the ones who have some prettiness, can speak a bit of english and who like the bar atmosphere. She'll keep her punter in the bar buying drinks.

 

Then there's that old chestnut of whether bars make money. Well, its not good to look at it month by month, you have to look at the whole year. There are peaks and troughs but you need to be able to maximise profits in the busy times and curtail any losses if you have them. We have been profitable every month for the last 18 months.

 

You're not going to make a fortune from one bar. Realistically, one bar should give enough income for an expat to live comfortably. A larger bar or multiple businesses and you can get to a few hundred thousand baht per month income.

 

As someone mentioned, it is all about location. It has very little to do with how much you charge for a drink. We all know that you can go to 7/11 or Soi 7 and get cheap beer but people go where they like. If you can offer a product which people like then they will come back again and again. Maybe you can add some value by doing something for your customers. One thing we do for example is to book hotel rooms. Costs nothing and makes the punter feel special. We do a lot of other things as well but I'm not giving away all my competitive advantage.

 

At the end of the day, if you think you can buy a bar and just sit at home and count the money, then you will have no money to count. Do never involve a Thai in your business - they will cheat you. Bargirls are stupid - they cannot correlate selling beers with their salary. If you don't crack the whip, then they will slack off. If you give them an inch they will try for a mile.

 

Finally, if you have never managed people before, do not buy a bar. If you cannot sack people on the spot, knowing that they may face hardship, do not buy a bar. If you are lazy, do not buy a bar. If you have too much money and are willing to overpay, come see me and buy my bar.

[krml]

Torrenova said:

"If you give them an inch they will try for a mile."

 

That not only goes for bargirls. That is anybody I have ever managed in the bar business. All of them are generally irresponsible and need to be treated with an iron fist. I hate being like that but I had to be a complete prick to the people I managed to keep them from trying to get over on me.

 

So I know exactly where you are coming from. I managed a multimillion dollar inventory at an American football stadium (Ravens Stadium) and it was amazing how stupid the bartenders were doing their paperwork. I would get to the stadium at 4 AM on gameday and leave at 10-11 PM that night after trying to rectify there paperwork. This after killing myself the whole game.