Here’s a question I get asked by Downtown restaurant owners, managers, and bartenders from time to time: “People seem to like my restaurant/bar. Downtowners and people from all over the city eat here, but I can’t seem to develop a regular bar crowd. I read on your blog about the barhopping you and your friends do every night. What would I have to do to get your group to come in regularly, or to develop a group of regulars similar to yours?”
Well, each restaurant is a unique case. But I do have some blanket advice that would apply to several places around Downtown right now. If you can’t cultivate a regular bar crowd, it may be that YOUR DRINK PRICES ARE TOO HIGH.
If you’re charging more than $3.50 for a Bud Light or equivalent, or $4.25 for a Corona or equivalent, you’re probably not going to have regulars. There are too many other places Downtown where people can get reasonably priced beer. I’m not saying you have to be like Big Foot and give away 34 ounces of beer for under four bucks, but I think there’s a generally accepted upper limit given economic conditions in Downtown Memphis right now, and $3.50/$4.25 is my best guess as to that limit.Note: You can get away with higher if you have something else special to offset it and still draw people in; e.g. the great happy hour appetizer deals Circa and the Westin’s Daily Grill have. NTN Trivia would probably be another incentive to justify higher prices, since no bar Downtown currently has it.
It’s a bit harder to set an acceptable upper limit on mixed drink prices. People who drink mixed drinks are often inexperienced drinkers who are out to get hammered, and if they’re going to do that, why not let them run up a huge tab and make a big profit off them? Also, if some loser guy wants to spend $9 for a Flirtini for a girl he’s been talking to for all of, say, 30 seconds, he deserves to be gouged too as a form of “stupid tax.” I guess my advice would be to at least have some kind of mixed drink available in the $5 range, even if it’s something boring like well gin and tonic. That will allow potential regulars who just want to hang out and drink and socialize for several hours, and who aren’t there to impress people or get wasted quickly, to do so without running up an enormous tab.
Just some thoughts from someone who spends a lot of time hanging out Downtown. If you have thoughts shoot me an e-mail (paul@paulryburn.com) and maybe I’ll do a followup post. I wish Blogger would let me enable comments on a post-by-post basis, because this is one where I’d actually like to have them turned on.
I haven’t forgotten about the “trip down memory lane” post, by the way. Been working on it tonight and am now up to 25 venues that have come and gone over the past 6 years. It will probably be posted sometime tomorrow.