Combination funeral home and bar. Have a drink with your dear departed-parties arranged by your theme. “Happy Hours” with half priced drinks, and motel rooms to sleep it off.
I’d like to have some kind of horse/pony/donkey rescue facility for older equines. Nobody would ever ride them or work them or race them: they would be free to just graze or sleep or walk around and visit one another, whatever they wanted to do every day for the rest of their lives.
This, plus have a state-of-the-art dressage barn with radiant heat in the floors of the stalls and aisleways, heated washracks, big locker room for boarders, even bigger tack room with large personal, lockable tack lockers, equine chiropractor and massage therapist on duty, four arenas (two outdoor, two indoor), all with Nike rubber footing, sound system, the best hay money can buy, stalls cleaned twice a day, acres of turnout pastures, big shady trees, trails through the neighboring hills, full-time trainer (mine), full-time manager and staff. I’d charge a pittance in board so riders could focus on paying for their lessons.
Tank golfing in the desert…it would be entrepreneurial, for sure.
Bookstore/coffeehouse.
Specializing in Mystery, True Crime, Horror, Science Fiction, & Fantasy.
Leather chairs, dark green carpets, dark wood bookshelves. Brass cash register.
A larger-than-life wooden bust of Holmes.
A larger-than-life wooden bust of Cthulhu.
A knight’s armor & lance.
A 5 foot tall [del]chromium[/del] brass spaceship, in Gothic raygun style.
I missed this the first time around but thanks to Mr. Spammy Spam who bumped the thread I can reply.
I’d want a three story building. Top two floors for living and the bottom floor would be a comic book shop/ coffee shop. I’d hire a baker to make frsh pastries, cookies, doughnuts and croissants.
Also on Friday and Saturday nights there’d be comedians and a small dinner menu and drinks.
Have you fantasy retailers ever worked dealing with the public? Because serving people is rarely the fantasy of people that have served people…
Personally, I wouldn’t deal with the public. I’d hire people to do that. I’d be off in the corner reading comics and drinking coffee or talking to the customers about comics stuff.
Name idea: Ralph’s Funeral Barlor
mmm
I imagine a lot of real life retailers fantasize about running a store where they can afford to throw out any customers they don’t like.
I’d set up a greenhouse and start a business where I planted containers for people - pots, baskets, window boxes, whatever.
You know those murder mystery B&B things? I would open a horror one. The house would be a gothic monstrosity of hidden passageways, trapdoors, twoway mirrors, fog machines, hinged ceiling pannels, shaking beds, drawers that move on their own, and all manner of special effects built in. It would be on a wooded hill up a long winding drive and an evil brooding thing, the most Bates motel, Amityville horor, Dunwich cobwebbed sinister black demons den ever silhouetted against a glowering sky. I would spare nothing from widows walk to ornate wrought iron gate to ancient family plot with mausoleum and graves that burst forth clawing molding gouls.
It would be a haunted house with a plot and actors, some planted among the guests for timely and gruesome disposal and some merely to seed doubt. There would be no chainless chainsaw weilding madmen but there would be madmen and women of a sort, just more along the lines of Lovecrafts dark tales and Poes Dr. Tarr and professor Feather. It would combine elements of a house of Usher type family who welcome you in as honored guests and seek your consil drawing you in with carefully timed whispered intrigues. There would be seances, midnight visits to a basement lab, individual tarrot readings with ominous urgings, and discovery of dark arts afoot in hidden rooms. There would be subtle hints and mounting horror, faulty electricity, and candle lit walks past graves to a fire on a hill where druid runed carvings adorn a circle of witches stones. It would still be a mystery but taunting a terrible denoughment kept just out of reach until the end. Nobody would break character or a smile unless to exhibit breaking sanity. It would be as real as I could make it and you would have to sign a very real waver. The price of a stay would be high and you would pay it because there would be nothing like it. Haunted houses take into account the squeamish. Drullar house would not.
It would be sued out of business in a month.
Do that, but make it funny.
Addams/Munster funny.
Anyone who insisted on making it funny would be taken to the torture chamber of the dungeon and chained to a table behind cell bars but in full view of the other guests. A lever would be pulled and sparks would fly as the lights flickered and a whirling sawblade descended from the ceiling. At one point the electricity would act up stopping the blade and it would seem just a good show. Then it would start again and just before the blade got to the customer who failed to go along with the “spirit” of the adventure the lights would go out and the table would flip to a dummy filled with blood and in clothing similar to the customers . When they came back on in a faint flicker of light the blade would cut the twitching dummy in half. The lights would fail entire at that point and the others be led upstairs by candle light.
The victims spouse would be unable to help because of the prison bars and would be escorted off the property where they would meet their unharmed spouse and be refunded their money as per the contract and waiver they had signed. Any soiled clothing would naturally be included in the refund.
The Kannabis Kitchen.
I’d sell cookies, candies, baked goods (see what I did there?), etc., all infused with THC. Obviously it would have to be in a state with legal medical marijuana.
Software engineering company employing formal methods, theorem proving, model checking, WCET analysis, etc. for ultra high assurance software like fly-by-wire systems, train network control software, encryption devices, etc. There’s only a few companies around doing this, and it seems pretty hard to break into the market as you need relevant contacts at e.g. Airbus and BAe Systems, as well as knowledge of a whole tonne of relevant legislation, to get going.
I’d love to see the return of the small, old fashioned amusement park, but in my area there’s a problem with the length of the season as well as the prohibitive cost of liability insurance. But I like the whole amusement park, arcade, entertainment, food, carnival atmosphere.
So my business idea is a somewhat scaled back, indoor carnival, maybe in one of the old mill buildings we have around here.
It would have some smaller kiddie rides, old-fashioned arcade and carnival “games of skill” like Skeeball, softball throw, shooting the ducks, etc., live entertainment, including sideshow performers, and all the junk food you can eat–corn dogs, blooming onions, fried dough, clam cakes, etc.
It could be open year round and in any weather. An area would be set aside for group gatherings and parties.
The most important think about it would it would be all old-school, pre-video game family entertainment.
From the business point of view, it would have elements similar to Dave & Busters or Chuck E. Cheese, but themed like a real outdoor carnival/country fair/amusement park.
A record company, perhaps with a recording studio, where I decide who gets the contracts. All beautiful music, since I wouldn’t have to worry about how much it would sell.
Or a publishers that specialised in translated books. I know some lovely books that I would like to see translated into one or more languages. I would like to do some of the work myself, though I would first spend some of my money on getting the necessary skills.