Dram Shop liability is covered by your business insurance policy, and there are statutory limits to what victims can recover. In Illinois that limit is $100,000; in Colorado it’s $150,000, for instance, if the victim has a really good case. And they’re not easy cases to prove, either. Not saying your worry is unfounded, but it’s not generally catastrophic for the business. I have no idea if complaints can build up against your liquor license, though.
Just fyi, the owner rarely has to deal with obnoxious drunks. That’s what bartenders and bouncers get paid to do.
Own a bar? Hell yes! Run the bar, fuck no! Hire managers for that.
A pretty close buddy is part owner of a brewery near Chicago. So not a typical “bar”, but they do sell a lot of beer for both in- and out-of-house consumption. He is basically the money/efficiency guy - you’ll never find him slinging drinks or cleaning bathrooms. He enjoys it. In fact, he made his investment around the time he started winding down his consulting gig. They were in the situation whgere business was booming, but they weren’t making any money.
It is not a lot different than many other small retail businesses. Their main issues were one partner embezzling, and then failure to professionalize the accounting as the business quickly grew. They have (IIRC) 3 buildings across the street from each other in a small town near a busy vacation spot - the brewery, the taphouse/restaurant, and a retail store/informal grill. So they have plenty of staff, and the owners aren’t working late nights and weekends.
Impresses me as a decent gig. But I’m not sure whether any of the owners are getting rich at it. As I understand it, margins are pretty miniscule.
(On edit - personally, I’d enjoy it more before I stopped drinking 15 yrs ago! ;))
Am I actually running the bar, or do I just show up from time to time and collect the money while my manager runs it?
I would imagine that if you were one of only a handful of bars in town, you could stay open a very long time. Some Manhattan bars like McSorley’s Old Ale House or Pete’s Tavern just become institutions, although that’s is no guarantee they will stay open forever (I’m looking at you CBGB).
IRL, most people tend to continue to order rounds of drinks, maybe even food.
In the real world, the owner is often the bartender/cook/host/etc. It is a rare restaurant that can be successful with an absentee owner.
my aunt and uncle used to run a bar. They had a crop of regulars they could depend on, and my uncle ran a deer-hunting club out of it. They had a pistachio nut dispenser, a billiard table in the back, and a microwave oven in lieu of a grill LONG before most people had ever heard of such things.
they eventually left the bar for other jobs – it really does take up most of your time, and it kind of intruded on their home life. the bar lasted a while in other hands, then got turned into someone’s home (I’d like to see how they managed THAT. the bar itself was pretty impressive, with a great painting of a buck in the back). it got destroyed in the flood that accompanied Sandy a few years ago, so now there’s just an empty lot there.
35 years ago? Maybe. Today? No. I wouldn’t want the hours and the grief.
Seconded! I was an Uber/Lyft driver for six months and I really enjoy going out to bars and getting drunk with people. Being sober and driving them around truly sucked wind.
The only way I could comprehend of handling it would be if I won the lottery and bought a bar and hired dependable managers to run the place. Then I could drink all I wanted and could get away with being an ass if the occasion arose. I’m thinking my dream bar would be on a beach.
Exactly this.
My father was a small business advisor for the university extension for several decades, and he had a lot of clients who had (or wanted to start) restaurants or bars. He saw, many times over, the phenomenon of a restaurant or a bar that started out, and was doing well, because the owner (and, often, his or her family members) worked like dogs to make it successful.
After a few years, the owners seemed to have gotten the ins and outs of their business figured out, the business was doing well, and they got tired of having no life outside of the business. So, they stepped back a bit, and put more of the day-to-day operations (and oversight) in the hands of managers and employees who didn’t have the same investment in the business that the owners did. And, almost without fail, the quality of the food and service went down, employees started taking advantage of things, customers got turned off and didn’t come back, and the place failed.
And vice versa.
Now, that’s a worthy bucket list. I think I can cross off only one. I gotta hurry up!
I’m going to jump in and agree with the posters above who gave responses like these.
My brother owned a beer joint (Crazy Oklahoma laws. He couldn’t sell hard liquor). He grew to hate it so much. If he wasn’t breaking up fights, he was dealing with people bitching because he had to raise the price of a beer 25 cents; or repairing the bathrooms because of idiots with the need to destroy things. Once some assholes decided to stand on a sink to try to see through a 12" x 6 grate/transom/vent thing that separated the men’s bathroom from the women’s bathroom. There’s no way anyone could have seen anything as it was about 3 or 4 inches from the ceiling. :dubious:. Dealing with broken pool cues, beers spilled on pool table felt. People breaking/stealing mugs, pitchers, darts, and anything else they could get their hands on. Just an overabundance of dumbassery. At the end of the day, what got him was just not being able to tolerate drunk people anymore. And this was a small town bar; where he knew everybody; so I don’t think had to deal with some of the other things I’ve heard bar owners deal with… selling and consuming of drugs; and other stuff that could get you shut down immediately.
I work closely with the people that manage my curling club bar, and I’m amazed at how much work it is, even in what must be the most benign of bar-managing environments (minimal pressure to make profit, and very few loutish customers).
First of all, something is always breaking. As in, always. Bar equipment is old (unless you can afford to replace it every couple of years–good luck with that) and under a lot of wear and tear. One day the dishwasher breaks, then the soft drink guns, then the drainage system. And then you have to schedule repairs and supervise the repair crews, often for multiple visits.
The annual state and local liquor license renewal is a huge time-consuming PITA. The periodic inspections invariably come at the worst time (as in, the day the drain backs up) and, even if everything is working, can be completely arbitrary and capricious. And, they often lead to another round of repairs.
Hiring and scheduling bartenders is a challenge, especially for special events. This leads to a lot of overtime, which is OK for us but hell for a business running on a thin margin. Keeping everything stocked is a shit-ton of work–not so much the alcohol, but all the ancillary crap from napkins to toilet paper to olives to dishwashing soap. You’re always running out of something.
So if you were to combine all this with pressure to pay the rent each month and earn enough to live on, and with loutish drunks from off the street . . . no, I would not want to own a bar.
Opposite as they may seem to Acsenray, bars and coffee shops do serve similar purposes socially. I even know a couple of places that function as both.
My original post was a reflection of real life. I often meet groups of people in bars or coffee shops to discuss this and that, as well as to hear live music from time to time. Again, were I possessed of a large fortune and not worried about the firm turning a profit or having to run it day to day, it might be fun to be the owner of a place where I may enjoy hanging out and holding court - kind of like Tony Soprano uses the Bada-Bing. I would not want to make it my full-time business or primary source of income.
I think that was at least part of my point–bars and coffee shops serve very similar functions, but coffee shops are less likely to come with the extreme negative aspects of a bar.
Does it come fully stocked? If so, then yes - but no one else can use it. If not stocked, then no - it’s just a box with tables in it.