Jane D’oh, you very well could be right on that. I haven’t managed the books before, so this could be the case. However, everywhere in Chicago (and the rest of Illinois that I’ve seen), not just bars, but Olive Garden type restaruants, all charge tax on the food, but not on the liquor.
While the tax could be built into the price, and seems logical for typical bars which deal in volume, but why wouldn’t the the restaruants charge tax on booze when it all is totalled on a check anyways? It just seems like far to uniform a systemto just be coincidence. I assumed that it was a state policy or something.
Ender, I agree about the Absolut thing. It would be a call drink based on popularity and quality, but thats one item that has a unexpectedly high cost. I asked my boss about it, and he said where Captain costs $13 a bottle, Absolut costs $19 and Ketel One only costs $21.
All the vodkas seemed to not be discounted much between bar wholesale and liquor store prices.
Muad’Dib, I hope this stays in GQ as you’re getting a lot of factual (and interesting) information. However, I’d like to offer a slightly different perspective.
You’ve got exactly the wrong attitude.
Look at it this way. This has the potential to be enormously entertaining and you cannot possibly fail since anything would be an improvement. Imagine that you’ve been handed an enormous party machine and told to go have fun.
The pricing, etc. is critical to success. But at the end of the day, it’s all in the marketing. People will want to go to your bar because they have fun there. So be creative! Make sure people have fun! Be a little funky, a little offbeat. Every bar on the planet has sports on. Big deal. Try running, say, a Simpsons happy hour and see what happens. Imagine what kind of promotion you could run with that large box of stuff animals!
The point is that you’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain. Go for it. If you do some incredibly wacky promotion and end up getting booted over it, you’ll still have a great experience and a great story to tell. Believe me, that story will be way more valuable to you in twenty years than anything monetary you earn at this job.
Option A) Make yourself annoying, threaten to quit, tell your bosses that you can make piles of money if they let you deal with. They fire you, or you get your way.
Option B) You stick with the status quo, and quit, because its annoying.
Why don’t you take out a loan, and open your own bar across the street?
I think if I owned this place, I would hire someone like Omnicient to run it for a good percentage (to be periodically renegotiated) and GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY.
…Of course, I’d want to watch the books (not a slur on your honesty, Omniscient, just good practice).
MD, you seem to be interested in sucess. Could they be convinced to try something like that for a time?
They can hardly do worse than you described. They’d have to trust your judgement with accounts, but from what you’ve described, your investment of work, interest, and care would leave you in good standing with me.
