River of Revenue
The Dance Floor as Profit Stream

Elite, veteran owners of high-concept dance venues immediately consider dance floor layout and its relationship to all other aspects of the house. But new owners, understandably, might not even realize the importance of this consideration. Poorly planned dance floor size or placement can result in traffic and crowd problems, suffocating what should be a comfortable space.

Balancing Crowd Flow and Revenue
“The dance floor should be away from the bar,” says Ernie DiGennaro, president of California Portable Dance Floor Co. As the name implies, the company specializes in sectional, portable dance floors. “So many people congregate around the bar. You can’t have it together, because it causes such congestion.” But a smart floor plan will balance key interests of crowd management and sales. Separation of bar and dance floor achieves the first but ultimately creates a divide between patrons and where they spend their money. “If you’re just keeping people away from a revenue-generator to go to a dance floor, they’re not buying drinks,” says Ken Ranucci, president of Creative Nightclubs LLC — formerly Creative Environments — based in Boynton Beach, Fla. The company’s clientele is now more than 90 percent nightclubs, Ranucci says, hence the name change to reflect its direction. Its major products include Illusion Flex and Liquid Floor flooring. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his partners in the Whiskey River concept contacted Ranucci when designing their second location in Charlotte, which will boast 12,000 square feet. “They really want to focus on the dance floor, and they don’t want it to be next to the bar,” Ranucci says. “They want a reason for their customers to approach the dance floor, and they want it to be a source of revenue. That’s a challenge.” It’s a challenge Ranucci approaches with an understanding of guest motivations and a little imagination. “The idea being Whiskey River, we’re going to create a 4-6 step-up made from heat-bent Plexiglas,” he says. “It will be a raised dance floor that appears as though it is a flowing river. The front of the dance floor is going to retract, so you see this whiskey-fl owing river of steps that you walk up onto, and the entire dance fl oor will be a whiskey river. And it creates a traffic flow pattern to the VIP bottle service area — so there’s the destination. A dance floor should lead to revenue generation.” Leading guests to a spending spot is tough, since putting a bar next to it is going to attract a middling crowd of people standing. But other solutions exist. “If you created maybe a curved banister, on the opposite side of the river that would have bottle service and VIP tables, it gives people a reason (to spend money),” Ranucci says. “Everybody likes to watch people dance, and to do that and get a premium view, you have to be seated in the VIP bottle service area.”

Size Matters
It’s often difficult to predict what a venue’s capacity needs will be on the dance floor itself, but DiGennaro offers a rule of thumb for calculation based on the club’s overall capacity. First, he says, estimate how much space you’ll need per person. “Usually when a person builds a dance floor, we consider that since our sections are 12 square feet, we think that will accommodate two people comfortably,” he says. “So, when considering what size to make a dance floor, I’d say (allot for) 2 to 2 1/2 people per 12 square feet.” Then, estimate roughly how many people likely will be dancing. “If there are 100 people at the party, usually maybe 40 percent will dance,” DiGennaro says. “If a club’s saying ‘Our place will accommodate 200 people,’ 40 percent of those will dance, so that’s probably what size dance floor to start with.” Of course, California Portable’s products allow operators to expand or minimize the dance floor by adding or taking away sectional pieces of floor. The company recently shipped a floor to the Hannah Montana tour at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. “She bought a little one,” DiGennaro says. “After that, they were going to the Texas Convention Center and decided they needed a bigger one, so we shipped them additional sections. That’s a good example of how versatile a sectional  dance floor is.”