There's no real trick to filling your bar on a Friday or Saturday night. Crowds flock to bar stools or dance floors looking for a good time and a cold drink on these nights. What separates a good bar from a great bar is the ability to attract patrons during downtimes, like a Tuesday afternoon.
While drink specials and trivia games are a good start to revitalizing slow times, don't forget that people like to eat, too. Offering an appetizer menu is a proven way to complement even the most extensive Happy Hour drink selection.
Full-Program Speakers Will Share the Wealth of Wisdom
By Taylor Rau
Notepad? Check. Pen? Check. Goal to return home after the Las Vegas Nightclub & Bar show (“The Show”) Feb. 27-March 2 with said pad full of ideas about increasing your venue's profits? Check. You're all set for success then, if your plans for increased prosperity in 2005 include attending “The Show's” seminars with the best and brightest speakers in the industry.
This year's lineup is brimful with factual insight, creativity in the field, and with speakers' enthusiasm to help on-premise operators boost their bottom lines, better market themselves and their products, limit the liabilities of operation that in turn limit their overall success, and much more. Indeed, words of wisdom to help and encourage those who thrive in the hospitality field are abundant and accessible.
Drinkware Can Be As Individual As a Venue Brand Itself
By Meg Frazier
As any good bartender knows, the right glassware can make a venue's star cocktails shine all the brighter when presented to paying customers. Likewise, the opposite is equally true. Imagine serving a drink to a patron in a biker bar poured into a frou-frou glass.
"Right" is not only a relative term for operators in search of the proper glassware, but one with applications reaching beyond mere appearance. Expensive crystal wine glasses are no match for the rowdy customers who frequent Punk establishments, and less expensive plastic stemware looks equally out of place at an upscale cocktail lounge.
It's nearly impossible to cover all the bases in glassware availability. Even if funds are not limited, space usually is, regardless of how big or profitable a venue may be, and therein lies the dilemma. Whether you decide to purchase glass or plastic drink ware, logoed or non-logoed drink ware products, high-end chic or stems on the cheap, finding a product that is eye-catching, durable and functional is a must.
It's easy to call yourself a top spirits company. Being one in the volatile, liquid, global marketplace of 2005 is another matter. It takes not only great spirits products, but a distribution strong arm with a long and steady reach. It requires constant innovation, as well as promotions and marketing and advertising. And more.
The proof is not just in the bottle — it's also measured by the millions and even tens of millions of case sales of a given brand or category — and in a given company's annual share of the multi-multi-billion-dollar on-premise spirits market.
Notably, small, unknown spirits purveyors today can become the burgeoning giants of tomorrow. When these suppliers reach this echelon of supplying, they earn the respect and resulting business of countless individual operators, but often, operators don't know much more about these companies beyond their brands. As an owner/operator, did you ever stop and ask yourself what drives these top spirits teams to compete, and what concerns and agendas they have for on-premise operations today?
To list and enlighten, for reference and for revenue, here are the industry's top guns at large, along with an insight or two on how and why they want on-premise profits to soar sky high.
Although St. Patrick went to a better place more than 1,500 years ago, his patron soul is very much with us today, as each March 17, millions of men and women gather to celebrate his kindred spirit — often with a few spirits themselves.
For as much folklore as St. Patrick inspired, he also has inspired a plethora of recipes for remembering plight in Ireland. As legend goes, Patrick, born in Britain, was abducted at the age of 16 from his family's estate by Irish raiders and taken to the Emerald Isle, where he spent six years in captivity, working as a shepherd. It was during this time that he became a devout Christian, and when he escaped from his captors — by walking nearly 200 miles to the Irish coast — he returned to Britain where he immersed himself in religious training for more than 15 years. After his ordination as a priest, Patrick returned to Ireland to minister those in need.
Another fact perhaps not well known is that the first St. Patrick's Day parade took place not in Ireland, but in America when Irish soldiers serving in the British military marched through New York City on March 17, 1762.
Today, the occasion is a time to break out the green and pride, and for owners and operators of bars, taverns, pubs and nightclubs, rake in the green and profit. All it takes to get started are a few clever “clover” libations — promoted — and served. NCB
Patron Demand for This Cocktail Phenomenon Is Still Priming Profits On-Premise
By Mike Hanley
Take some vodka, triple sec, cranberry juice and a little lime juice, shake it with ice, strain it into a Martini glass, and you have made one of the most popular drinks in the country today — the Cosmo. Before many of the patrons drinking them on-premise today were even born, Cosmopolitan magazine introduced a recipe that has become almost a new category on today's hot drink menus.
How it got so popular is a s simple as four little words — "Sex and the City." After being seen on the popular HBO cable television show, Cosmo drinkers sprung up from Manhattan to Montana. It seems that every fan of the show wanted to live just like the women portrayed in the show, starting with what they drank. Fans came to bars with a different perspective on the bar scene, including drinking Martinis like the Cosmo and on later episodes, the Apple Martini.
While the television show now exists only in re-rums, the demand for the drink it popularized is still out there, just waiting for enterprising operators to capitalize on its sexy success.
With 'Bar Mentality' and an Iconic Concept, Lil Lovell Has Included Servers in an Unparalleled, Profitable Party at Coyote Ugly
By Tad Wilkes
Liliana “Lil” Lovell discovered that the way to break through the glass ceiling of the on-premise industry was to jump up onto the top of the bar.
When Lovell started managing a New York bar at 21, few female bartenders, let alone managers, were on the scene at hard-drinking establishments. Today, Lovell, founder of Coyote Ugly Saloon in New York, is based in New Orleans, running her company, Ugly Inc., overseeing 14 Coyote Ugly locations and jetting around the globe scouting new locations. Still, the hands-on Lovell frequently can be found at her New York and French Quarter bars.
