Expert Advice on Hospitality Topics

Maximizing Your Bar's Profits

Posted by Nick Kaoukis on Wed, Nov, 14, 2012 @ 10:11 AM
By Douglas Robert Brown
Atlantic Publishing
 Maximizing Bar Profits

Once your bar is open, it will start making profits on each drink sold. However, in today's competitive marketplace, a profit is not always enough to keep a bar in business. In many cases, you need to focus on getting more per drink in order to make your bar a success. There are several ways that the bar can help ensure a larger profit:

  • Offer your bar staff incentives to make sure that you are getting the business you need. Your staff can help customers find a venue (your bar) for functions or can promote a drink that is a known profit maker if they know that they will get more money for it. If a staff member books an event that brings in $500, a $50 incentive for the staff member is well-spent money indeed.
  • Know which drinks make the most profit and advertise them. Knowing which drinks can help bring in the money is key. Once you have figured out which items bring in the most money, make sure that you advertise them. Have staff mention these drinks by name, and make these drinks more visible and more visually appealing. In many cases, suppliers will help by providing you with coasters, posters, or other items that advertise certain brands.
  • Make sure your customers get value. Too many business owners (and bar managers) cut corners, thinking that spending less means more profit. Studies have shown that the opposite is true—if the customer thinks they are getting more than they can expect, they will often respond in kind by patronizing the bar and bringing their friends. 
  • Make it easy to linger. Have interesting television on in the background. Have your staff ask "How about a round of coffee?" rather than "Would you like the bill?" The longer people linger at your pub or bar, the more they will buy. Also, if your bar has some people in it, it will be more appealing and lively to other customers. Customers are valuable—never rush them out.
  • Stay flexible. Keep eyeing the crowd, and if you notice shifts in the crowd, be flexible enough to change to suit the crowd. Did a bachelor party just come in? Adjust by running a one-off special on beer or by turning on dance lights. Is there a more sedate crowd tonight? Bring things down a notch with softer music and lights. Your customers will appreciate the extra touch and will be more likely to stay if your place is just what they're are looking for.
  • Make sure that there is always someone on staff who can make executive decisions. If there is a profit to be made and a customer to be satisfied by veering from the ordinary (by preparing special drinks or booking special functions), be sure that someone on staff can make the right decision for the bar, fast.
  • Cut down on how often you say no. There is no way to satisfy each customer, but do try to keep a variety of things on hand so that you can make the drinks and snacks customers demand. Don't spend lots of time or money trying to buy every item, but do stock up on items that can be used in the near future (sodas, non-perishables). Make sure your staff know what is on hand and have them suggest an alternative when the customer asks for something that is not available. Whenever someone at your bar says no, they are giving a patron an excuse not to return.
  • Consider merchandise. A great logo on T-shirts, pens, golf shirts, baseball caps, key chains, lighters, and glasses takes up little room but can bring in as much money (or even more) than your beverage items.
  • Consider vending machines. Vending machines are easy places for customers to get anything from antacids, breath mints, phone cards, bottled water, condoms, feminine products, snacks, to cigarettes. Vending machines allow you to make a profit without taking much effort. Your local Yellow Pages can easily put you in touch with vending suppliers near you. You can even place your snack vending machines outside the bar proper so that you keep earning money while the bar is closed.
 

This article is an excerpt from the The Professional Bar & Beverage Managers Handbook: How to Open and Operate a Financially Successful Bar, Tavern and Nightclub, authored by Douglas Robert Brown, published by Atlantic Publishing Group. This excerpt has been reprinted with permission of the publisher. To purchase this book go to:

Atlantic Publishing Company
Amazon.com

Topics: Bar staff, bar profitability, NightClub Management, bar business, Bar drinks, Bar Management, Nightclub Consulting, bar design

Bar Management Tips: Keeping Up Appearances

Posted by Nick Kaoukis on Thu, Sep, 13, 2012 @ 11:09 AM
By Douglas Robert Brown
Atlantic Publishing
 

Outdoor Areas Deserve Focus

Most customers will be people who have passed you by in the past and decided to try your venue. In order for this to happen, you need to pay far more attention to the exterior of your venue than most bar operators do. Here are some easy ways to spice up your outside areas:

  • A graphic projection lighting system. Also known as a "bat light," this type of system can provide a highly effective way to advertise your bar to passersby. It also looks great when used on the inside of your establishment. Bat lights use a light and optic setup to project your logo or other related graphics onto any surface, including walls, ceilings, the outside sidewalk, and more. They can be purchased or rented for far less than you might think. 
  • Bar Neon SignSignage. From how far away can your bar be seen? If you can't be seen at least a block away, consider increasing your outside signage. While this is not a small expense, there's no point in hiding the fact that your bar is nearby. If you talk to your distributors, you might find that one of them is prepared to subsidize the cost of your signage, in return for mention of their product.
  • Neon works! Why do you think every bar has neon beer signs in the window? The answer is simple: because people notice them. An impressive neon sign is a local landmark. Think of those huge neon signs in Times Square and how many tourists know of them and send photos of them home to their family. You don't have to go to quite that scale, but a small investment in neon will bring people in to take a closer look.
  • Don't discount the appeal of a nice paint job. Is your exterior freshly painted? A new paint job isn't just about aesthetics. The outside of your venue is usually assumed to reflect the inside. Consider asking your staff to come in after-hours and paint the walls for you, in return for a bonus. Most bar staff could use a few extra bucks now and then. It'll be a lot cheaper than hiring a professional.
  • Landscaping isn't a luxury. Just as your exterior walls say a lot about your interior, so, too, do your grounds. If all you have outside your venue is a gravel-covered parking lot and a few beat-up pickup trucks, you're not going to attract a broad demographic, no matter what you offer inside. Plant some hardy greenery outside that will survive any weather extremes (choose varieties that will not need constant trimming and watering). This will soften the outside of your bar exterior. A few trees around the outside of the parking lot won't hurt, and some up-lights underneath them can offer a particularly breathtaking look, for not a lot of money.
  • Keep things neat. Remove snow in the winter, have an awning to protect patrons from the elements, and make your entrance attractive to ensure that more people will peek into your bar.
  • Who is greeting your customers? Is someone making them feel welcome right away or are they being greeted only by a suspicious security pterson? Do not give customers an excuse to walk away after they have made it all the way to your bar's door. Make them feel welcomed.

Add a Touch of Class

Formal SilverwareSometimes the only element that separates successful bars from those that fail is in the small professional touches of excellence. This extra effort implies that tremendous thought has been made all around to attain the highest level of quality possible. Professional bartenders and courteous cocktail waiters/waitresses can be found in any well-managed restaurant. However, it is the small, un-demanded touches and extra procedures that separate good lounges from superb ones. Described in this section are some simple, inexpensive suggestions that will give your bar the extra touches—the finesse—that will separate yours from the rest.

Simple signs of quality that make a big difference include:

  • Real napkins and table linens.
  • Fresh ingredients, real fruit juices, and high-quality garnishes.
  • Elegant presentation of drinks—garnishes, fancy napkins, and pretty glassware can turn even ordinary drinks into extraordinary ones.
  • Elegant cutlery and dinnerware.
  • Fresh flowers and candles.
  • Quality tables, chairs, and seating. Comfort is always appreciated.
  • Entertainment. Giving patrons something to do or something to look at while drinking is appreciated, especially by those customers who arrive alone.
  • Beautiful bathrooms. Many customers judge a bar by the bathrooms. If yours are beautiful, clean, and offer extras such as a sofa and breath mints, your bar will seem all the more impressive and wonderful to your customers.    
  • Elegant decor or a unique ambience. Even sipping a beer in a visually exciting place seems more interesting and fun than staying at home. Lights, colors, and artwork can easily create ambience on a small budget.

 

 

This article is an excerpt from the The Professional Bar & Beverage Managers Handbook: How to Open and Operate a Financially Successful Bar, Tavern and Nightclub, authored by Douglas Robert Brown, published by Atlantic Publishing Group. This excerpt has been reprinted with permission of the publisher. To purchase this book go to:

Atlantic Publishing Company
Amazon.com

Topics: Bar trends, NightClub Management, bar business, Nightclub Consulting, opening a bar, bar design

Bar Management: Standardizing & Optimizing Serving Practices

Posted by John Cammalleri on Tue, May, 15, 2012 @ 12:05 PM
By Chris Parry
Atlantic Publishing
 

Part 3 of 3: The Service Bar

service barThe service bar is an area of the bar dedicated to the servers only. If designed well it can greatly improve the flow of drinks from the bar to the customers. Alternately, if your service bar is not designed well, it can add yet another delay in an already-crowded process. When setting up a service bar, the things that should be considering are:

  • Layout. Will your staff need to make a long trip, past waiting customers, to get to your drinks server? Placing the service area off to the side of the bar might seem like a good plan when the bar is empty, but when it's full, a drinks server who has to yell to be heard is a disgruntled drinks server - and a frequently delayed one.
  • Drinks station.Is everything the bartender needs to prepare drinks positioned within six feet (a step and a reach) from a drink preparation area? If it isn't, you're only adding waiting time, opportunity for spillage and even waste to the drinks serving process.
  • How far do your drinks servers have to travel to reach your customers? Do you seriously expect your server to negotiate a heavy crowd with 12 drinks on his or her tray and not encounter spillage? Clear the way. Improve not just your server's efficiency but also customer traffic flow.
  • Service bar communication. If you have a bartender or bar devoted purely to drinks service, consider providing your servers with radio headsets that will allow them to communicate a drinks order to the bar from the floor. This simple move can save your servers from making literally hundreds of trips across the floor a night and can slash service times considerably.

Glass-Handling Rules

Too often, bar staff think of glasses as disposable partyware and all but ignore the fundamental rules of handling drink service equipment. Make your bar staff aware of the following, or you could find yourself in hot water down the road when someone complains:

  • Never, ever, use glasses as ice scoops. A tiny chip of glass falling into your ice bin can cause a great deal of injury, and bar glassware certainly isn't designed to shovel rocks of ice. Along the same lines, any time a glass breaks in or near an ice bin, the entire ice bin needs to be emptied and the contents disposed of before it can be used in the preparation of another drink.
  • Staff should never touch the upper half of a glass in the act of serving a drink. It's un­hygienic; it looks terrible to the customer; and the glass will be much more susceptible to breakage if it's being handled regularly in this manner.
  • Stemmed glasses. They're far more susceptible to breakage than most other types of glasses - not to mention usually more expensive. Make sure that all staff take extra care in the handling of these items, perhaps even to the point of washing them by hand.
  • Inspect. All glasses need to be inspected, if only briefly, before they're used in a drink order. A lipstick smudge, chip, crack or remnants of a previous drink are not only off-putting to a customer, but they're also hazardous to the customer's health.


 

This article is an excerpt from the Food Service Professional Guide to Bar & Beverage Operation, authored by Chris Parry, published by Atlantic Publishing Company. This excerpt has been reprinted with permission of the publisher. To purchase this book go to:

Atlantic Publishing Company 
Amazon.com


Topics: bar efficiency, NightClub Management, bar supplies, bar business, Bar Management, bar design

BAR MANAGEMENT: TRENDS TO LOOK FOR AND EXPLOIT

Posted by John Cammalleri on Thu, Apr, 26, 2012 @ 13:04 PM

The nightclub business can be a rough. With a plentitude of competing venues, and with customer tastes in constant flux, the average half-life of a bar or nightclub is all too brief. Survival can depend on your ability to stay ahead of the curve and be in tune with your customers’ ever-changing demands. In short, you need to be constantly aware of what’s in  and what’s not in order to remain vital. Here is a brief compendium, in three parts, of some of the emerging and continuing trends in the industry, just a few things to look out for in 2012 and beyond:

Part 3 of 3: STORE CONCEPTS

mixologistSimplicity over pretention. While bars that employ top-notch mixologists offering creative drinks will continue to attract more and more customers, you can also expect a trend towards simplicity. As David Wondrich put it in Nation’s Restaurant News, “The biggest trend I see is bringing mixology down to the fun/dive-bar level.” Expect to find well-made, “sophisticated” drinks in friendlier, “less sophisticated” surroundings.

Live music and entertainment. Live acts are in. More and more bar patrons are looking to be entertained while they enjoy a drink or a bite. While live entertainment has always been a good  way to drive traffic to your store, drinkers and diners—particularly the over thirty crowd—are starting to look for it more and more. Thanks to the Internet, booking these acts—whether a local band, a jazz singer or comedian--is easier than ever before. What’s more, social media sites like Facebook and Myspace allow you to gauge the kind of following these acts have, giving you some idea of the level of traffic you might expect.

Bottle Service. With economic recovery on the horizon, expect bottle service to once again gain popularity. While it never really went away—at least not in the VIP lounges of the latest hotspots—bottle-service popularity did wane a bit during the recent economic meltdown. Look for a comeback.

“Daylife”. Daylife has begun to rival nightlife in bars and clubs across the country, especially during summertime. Rooftop bars and hotel pool areas are natural “hotspots” on sunny days. But patrons’ willingness to partake in daytime drinking shouldn’t be ignored, even if your store lacks a rooftop, pool or courtyard area. A weekend brunch bash or an early happy hour on weekdays can be just as profitable. Expect more and more bars to begin taking advantage of customers’ gameness for early revelry.

Larger Nightclubs. Expect to see larger—20,000+ square-foot—venues opening up in major cities. Also expect some of these new mega clubs to be segmented into distinct areas within. Instead of roped off VIP areas, you’ll begin to see entirely separate enclaves, or mini-clubs, within the larger store.

Multi-use spaces. Hand in hand with the (re-)emergence of larger nightclubs is the trend toward multi-use venues. Instead of putting all their eggs in one basket, drinking establishments will increasingly employ versatile-design  elements (such as colored glass walls that can be turned into projection TV’s) to start to cater to different clienteles. Expect to see multi-use spaces  that can be turned into dance clubs, live-music venues and sports bars.

brewtruc

Cocktail trucks. Where not prohibited by law, expect to see cocktail trucks peddling alcoholic concoctions. You may have noticed food trucks on street corners of major U.S. cities. Often run by talented chefs and would-be restaurateurs (who may lack the requisite capital to establish a more permanent store), these trucks offer a various, often high-quality, fare. This trend is now being extended to potables. In San Francisco, BrewTrucs can be seen  roving the streets hawking coctails and beer to thirsty pedestrians. Moreover, cocktail trucks have become a tool for liquor manufacturers nation-wide to build brand recognition. While legal issues will limit the growth of these bars on wheels, you may well see more and more of these trucks at parties and campus events.

Topics: Bar trends, NightClub Management, bar business, Bar drinks, Bar Management, Bar products, Nightclub trends, opening a bar, bar design, Bar Promotion

BAR MANAGEMENT: TRENDS TO LOOK FOR AND EXPLOIT

Posted by John Cammalleri on Wed, Mar, 21, 2012 @ 14:03 PM

The nightclub business can be a rough. With a plentitude of competing venues, and with customer tastes in constant flux, the average half-life of a bar or nightclub is all too brief. Survival can depend on your ability to stay ahead of the curve and be in tune with your customers’ ever-changing demands. In short, you need to be constantly aware of what’s in  and what’s not in order to remain vital. Here is a brief compendium, in three parts, of some of the emerging and continuing trends in the industry, just a few things to look out for in 2012 and beyond:

Part 2 of 3: INTERNET & TECHNOLOGY

Online reservations. Online reservations will continue to experience modest growth. While not a rapidly growing trend, the use of the Web to find where to go to eat and drink has become so common  a Web presence, and a listing in Zagat, Opentable and other where-to-go sites is crucial in attracting new customers

ipad in restaurantGoing mobile
. Google projects that mobile devices will overtake PCs as the most common Web-access device by 2013.The ubiquity of smartphones and tablets makes it imperative that Websites be mobile-friendly. As many of these devices either do not support or have trouble playing Flash content (which has become a staple of restaurant, nightclub and bar sites), you would be well-served to optimize your site to take advantage of the rapidly growing number of mobile users who rely on their iPhones and iPads to find where to go for a drink or a bite.

Social media. The growth of social media continues. Twitter, Facebook and Google+, alone, boast a combined 1.5 billion users. Moreover, social media sites will become a key component of Search Engine Results Page (SERP) algorithms. If you’re not already using social media as a marketing tool, it’s time, perhaps, to start. It’s often said that the best form of advertising is word of mouth. What social media does is combine the credibility of word of mouth with the reach of mass media. In fact, the social media’s reach far surpasses that of any form of traditional mass media. Given this, it may make sense to hire a social media manager to help promote your store.

electronic cigarettesElectronic cigarettes. Electronic cigarettes are becoming more and more ubiquitous. These electrical devices, which produce a flavored aerosol mist that simulates tobacco smoke, have become popular both as a way of quitting tobacco and as a way for smokers to kinda feed their habit in places where actual smoking is prohibited. Expect e-cigarettes to become a more common sight in bars and nightclubs in 2012. Also expect them to be sold more widely in drinking establishments. Not only do these devices provide an added revenue stream, they may actually have the added benefit of keeping smokers inside and drinking.

Tablets. By the end of 2011, nearly 34 million Americans owned iPads and other tablets. With new, less expensive tablets going on themarket, that number is expected to grow 63% in 2012, and by 2014 it’s predicted that 90 million Americans (or a third of the population) will own a tablet computer. Expect these devices to be adopted more broadly in the hospitality industry—not only as a (POS-integrated) replacement for the wait staff’s order pads, but as enhanced menus (with photos, ingredients, the calorie count of foods, suggested wine pairings etc.). Many wine bars and restaurants are already using tablets as a replacement to traditional wine menus. Tablets also provide an opportunity to provide cheap entertainment, in the form of interactive gameplay, to bar patrons.

DMX Lighting in Nightclub

DMX lighting. LED’s and new, cheaper and simpler-to-use DMX lighting software will allow owners of restaurants, lounge bars and nightclubs to modify the look and feel of their stores with greater ease, without having to overhaul the entire architecture. Whether as means of creating an entirely fresh look or as a way of changing mood lighting to match an event, a season, or a time of day, you’ll begin to see DMX lighting used more widely to create a fresh look and feel.

 

Topics: social media, Technology, Bar trends, NightClub Management, bar business, Bar Management, Nightclub trends, opening a bar, bar design, DMX lighting, Bar Promotion

Outfitting Your Bar to Achieve Maximum Profitability

Posted by John Cammalleri on Tue, Dec, 06, 2011 @ 11:12 AM
By Chris Parry
Atlantic Publishing
 

Part 3 of 3: Streamlining Service Areas

underbar layoutWhen you design your service area, it's important to realize that every step a bartender takes in the serving of a drink is costing you money and making your customers impatient. Where does your staff need to walk to get a clean glass? How far from there to the ice bins and then to the spirit dispenser? And where are your soda guns in relation to the bottles? Is the cash register yet another trip away from the customer? Even if your bartender has to take only four or five steps between each of these posts, consider how far that means your bartender has to walk in the course of serving 500 drinks a night! This is bad enough for a solo bartender, but when two or three people are working behind the same bar and sharing facilities, it can be an unproductive nightmare.

  • Most bartenders are right-handed. With this in mind, your bar setup should allow your staff to pick up glasses with their left hands and bottles with their right, so that the drink creation process is at its most productive. If your bottles are on the left and glasses on the right, your people will do a lot of crisscrossing back and forth, resulting in more time taken to prepare a drink - and a lot more breakage and spillage.
  • Consider your customers. If they're lined up three deep to get a drink, and the bar staff need to take extra steps for every drink, each of those customers doesn't just wait longer for his or her own order, but for every order ahead as well. These people are lining up to give your business money - the last thing you should do is make it difficult for them to do so.
  • Low-cost equipment. If you can't afford to equip your bar with brand-new reach-in refriger­ators, there is another low-cost alternative. Consider keeping a sink full of ice directly beneath the bar top. Have three or four dozen high-turnover bottled beers in the sink at all times. Your staff can refill the "Bud bins" from refrigerated stock whenever there's a slowdown in customer traffic, thereby saving dozens of unnecessary trips to the fridge every hour, not to mention giving your customers faster service.
  • Pre-made mixes. To save time during their busiest periods, many bars pre-make cocktail mixes. While this is a good plan, be sure not to have these pre-made mixes sitting out in plain view. Ensure your staff don't refill them in the public eye. If your bottom line dictates that you have to use tequila from Peoria, it's best not to advertise the fact when you're charging eight bucks a drink.

The Under-Bar

Your under-bar is the engine of your bar area. If it's designed well, your staff can get from order to delivery in seconds. If it's poorly designed and dys­functional, your customers and staff could spend a good portion of the night stuck in bar traffic.

  • Focus on the customer. Employee interaction is the key. The under-bar area should contain everything your staff needs to fill 80 percent of their drink orders without moving a step away from the customer. If your staff aren't able to engage your customers in steady conversation as they're filling their orders, you're not only putting your staff through more work than they need, but you're also making your customers wait too long.
  • Bar layout. If your staff can work more effectively within a smaller area of the bar, you will be able to fit more staff behind that bar during peak periods, ensuring faster service and higher productivity. Take a fresh look at the bar area and consider what changes you can make to improve productivity.
  • Streamline your workstation. Many bar-fitting companies sell sink units that include speed racks, jockey boxes, ice sinks and more. They can also replace aged fittings with a minimum of fuss and expense. This will give your staff a compact, efficient workstation from which to maximize their time and effort. Prices vary, but when you consider the time, labor and customer tolerance savings, it's a purchase that will pay for itself many times over. BigTray (www.bigtray.com) can sell you this kind of equipment online or over the phone at 1-800-BIG-TRAY

 

 

This article is an excerpt from the Food Service Professional Guide to Bar & Beverage Operation, authored by Chris Parry, published by Atlantic Publishing Company. This excerpt has been reprinted with permission of the publisher. To purchase this book go to:

Atlantic Publishing Company 
Amazon.com


Topics: Bar inventory, Bar staff, bar efficiency, bar profitability, bar, NightClub Management, bar supplies, bar business, Bar Management, Bar products, opening a bar, bar design, Increasing Profits

Outfitting Your Bar to Achieve Maximum Profitability

Posted by John Cammalleri on Thu, Oct, 27, 2011 @ 17:10 PM
By Chris Parry
Atlantic Publishing
 

Part 2 of 3: Design Your Bar With the Customer in Mind

 Consider Customer Comfort

Bar DesignHave you ever sat under a blue neon light for an hour? While neon decor might look great when a bar is packed to capacity and the music is pumping, when business is slow it's like a power drill closing in on the center of your forehead. Certainly your customers should be impressed by your decor, but will the very look that draws them in end up driving them away early? Consider the following:

  • Invest in comfortable seating. Wooden barstools may look fine, and are usually very cheap to purchase and maintain, but are they likely to give your patrons buttock cramps after an hour? Try padded seating. Make sure the customers can move their seats to suit with a minimum of fuss - never have barstools and tables bolted to the floor.
  • Consider installing booths. Replace those cheap tables. If you want your customers to stay all night, give them the kind of seats that will make them too comfortable to leave. Customers tend to settle into booths, especially if a venue is crowded. If your drink servers are attentive and food is available, a group in a booth is all the more likely to settle in until closing. Remember, a shaky table is very easy to walk away from.
  • A comfortable bar surface keeps your clientele happy. Make sure your customers can lean on the bar and get comfy without getting cold elbows. This is much more likely if your bar surface is wood than if it's stainless steel or marble.
  • Lighting. Your lighting does more than just keep people from bumping into one another - it sets a mood. If you've inherited a system of overhead fluorescent lights or neon, consider getting a lighting specialist to give you suggestions on potential improvements. It won't cost as much as you think. Generally a quote is free.

Color Schemes Influence Buyer Behavior

Have you ever wondered why fast-food outlets almost always follow the same color scheme? The McDonald's decor and logo are yellow and red, as are those of Taco Bell and Burger King; KFC's are red and white, just like Pizza Hut, Wendy's and Jack in the Box. Coincidence? Not quite. Research has shown that certain colors promote cravings in consumers. When an establishment is decked out in reds and yellows, customers tend to experience feelings of hunger, not to mention an inability to settle down and relax. It's believed that those colors will cause a moderately hungry person to order a little more than he or she needs. They also will prompt customers to move on quickly once their money is spent. Blues and greens, on the other hand, promote relaxation, serenity and even lethargy amongst customers, which might be the better option for an establishment like a bar, where you're looking to keep your clientele seated for the long haul. How can you utilize these colors to quietly "persuade" your customers to buy, buy and buy?

  • Menus and food areas. A red and yellow color scheme on your tabletop menus or food area signage may cause your patrons to develop a stronger urge to order food, yet not be so over­ whelming as to chase them out the door.
  • Bar decor. Some hardy potted plants, maybe a few palms and a little pastel color on your walls may help your bar promote a feeling of island- like serenity in your customers, compelling them to relax a little - and stay.
  • External decor. Your signage and building front are supposed to draw people in. But does your frontage inspire the desire to party? Or does it drive people to the KFC down the street?
  • Staff uniforms. Do the colors of your employees' uniforms say to your customers, "Welcome, stay a while," or "I'm busy, what do you want?" Your staff uniforms are an important part of your overall decor. Your decisions about their design can radically change the atmosphere of your establishment.

 

 

This article is an excerpt from the Food Service Professional Guide to Bar & Beverage Operation, authored by Chris Parry, published by Atlantic Publishing Company. This excerpt has been reprinted with permission of the publisher. To purchase this book go to:

Atlantic Publishing Company 
Amazon.com


Topics: nightclubs, bar efficiency, bar, NightClub Management, bar supplies, bar business, Bar Management, Bar products, bar design

Outfitting Your Bar to Achieve Maximum Profitability

Posted by John Cammalleri on Fri, Oct, 21, 2011 @ 10:10 AM
By Chris Parry
Atlantic Publishing
 

Part 1 of 3: Bar Design

bar designThe way your bar operates depends on many factors, one of the most important being the "machinery" of the bar. Sometimes, no matter how efficient your staff, the bar just isn't set up to allow maximum productivi­ty. Avoid that happening to your bar.

  • Form over function? Think hard about potential consequences before spending too much money on interior design. Of course, how a bar is perceived aesthetically is very important. But, don't put aesthetics above function. It could radically hurt your business. Before starting on the renovations, stop and think about how they will affect your staff and the duties they have to fulfill.
  • Cramped working areas reduce productivity. Make sure the new bar has enough room for bartenders and glass collectors to move about freely.
  • Storage space. Is there enough storage space behind your bar to ensure your stock doesn't run dry three times a night? Consider extra fridge space or even bins full of ice for fast- selling bottled beer products.
  • Is the bar decor comfortable, attractive and easy to clean? Not only does clutter look bad; it can reduce productivity.
  • Comfort. Are your seats and tables the sort of quality furnishing that will keep a customer happily seated throughout the evening? A little more money spent on customer comfort will translate into dollars over the bar.

The Front Bar

Your front bar is your first line of attack in the fight to keep a customer coming back for more. When looking for ways to impress your clientele, remember that the impression this bar leaves on your patrons is of paramount importance. Consider these issues and make sure the design of your front bar works as well as it can:

  • Customer interaction is vital. Is your bar top too wide? Is the music too loud for a customer's order to be heard over a crowd? Does it inhibit your staff from being able to engage in friendly chat with your clientele? Interaction with your customers is crucial if you're going to turn one- off customers into regulars.
  • Be wary of mirrors. Mirrors may give a momentary illusion of more space, but they also fog up and smear an hour after they're cleaned. Mirrors might look good initially, but their maintenance does cost you money. Consider replacing them with artwork, memorabilia, menu boards, or something else that will draw people in. Don't just fill a space.
  • Appearances count. Do you have bits of paper stuck to the walls which might contain important information for your staff but look terrible to the customers? Make sure that any staff notices are out of your customers' eye line.
  • Design a bottle display with enough space to add to your inventory easily. A good selection of wines, beers, spirits and liqueurs is an essential part of a popular bar operation. You should always be looking to introduce your customers to something new.
  • Stock requisitions. Is there enough room on your bottle display to accommodate two bottles of each brand? When one bottle runs out, you don't want your staff to have to dig around a stock room for a replacement. Talk to a bar fitter about improving your bottle display. Add capacity. A small expense now can bring you future benefits.
  • Make it easy for your customers to see what you have on tap. Can your customers see what draft beers you have without craning their necks? Do patrons have to ask the bartender what's on offer every few minutes? If you watch the bar staff closely, you'll see that they spend a lot of time telling customers what beers you stock. Solve the problem by adding a small draft beer menu to each table and another on the wall behind the bar. Have the menus professionally prepared so that they add to, rather than detract from, your bar's appearance.
  • Is your entire inventory on display? Are your fridges in plain view? Floor fridges make access difficult for your staff. They also hide your product lines from your customers. Consider changing the setup behind your bar so that most of your fridge space is in clear view.

 

 

This article is an excerpt from the Food Service Professional Guide to Bar & Beverage Operation, authored by Chris Parry, published by Atlantic Publishing Company. This excerpt has been reprinted with permission of the publisher. To purchase this book go to:

Atlantic Publishing Company 
Amazon.com


Topics: bar efficiency, bar profitability, NightClub Management, bar supplies, Bar Management, opening a bar, bar design