STOP!!! To many new places opening?

[Kipper]

My partner and ihave a small but average club in OMAHA,NE. pop
of our town approx 350,000.Their is a number of small collages
in town ,w/ 60% to 40% white collar to blue collar ratio. My partner and I have had this club for 4.5 yrs .It started off as an oldies dance club ,but the oldies crowd started dying off .So a
year and a half ago we changed the name and remodled to give
our place the "cool night club look" upscale.At this time were only
1 of handful of clubs in town.
Now a year and a half latter w/ no population increase,but a
increase in competion more than triple the number in new clubs and the same w/ lounges,we find it really hard to stay a head or even of the game.
Their are no restrictions other than you cant have a felony record
to recive a liquor license.Currently there are 2300 licenses in our
city.
Inthis growing market how do we compete and still be a major
player???
Any ideas??? PLEASE FEEL FREE. Thanks

[buzz]

there are alot things you can do. You could do alot of promotions. How big is your nightclub? parking? do you have more room to build on? I have been a manager of a nightclub now since 97. I have learned alot. If you have good manager he should know what to do. One way of staying ahead of your competion is go and bar hop, look at what they are doing and make little changes. Do you serve food? is your staff friendly? and customer serves is the most important thing in this business. there is so much that you can do. Heres couple of ideas. These nightclub in town here which i have built. is open seven days a week. We have pool tables,darts, tvs, dance floor, we serve food, NTN Trivia, and beach volleyball. We focus on leagues. We have Monday night football qb1 league. which brings in thirty customers every monday night. We also have pool tournaments on mondays too, after the game we have a d.j. play music. Tues we have two for two dollars bottle beer and a d.j. wed we have Karaoke from 9-1am and have free pool and dancing all night. During this time we also have two full bars of people playing trivia. thur- fri - sat we a d.j. spinning records all night. we get a five dollar cover charge all three nights. On Fri we have soft tip dart league that plays at 8pm. These dart league brings in 70 people every friday. Sunday we show all the football games all day and at night we show wrestling payper view. starting this spring we will have beach volleyball league seven days a week. from 6pm til 10 pm. these will bring in a different crowed approx. 120 customers. we do alot things in these small bar. We are 5,500 square feet. thats without the deck for the volleyball. we have two bars , four pool tables, six dart boards, three big screens, 10 32in tv's. Are happy hour is the biggest in town. I hope this gave a idea of what to do.


later buzz

[steffen]

You know what's funny, is that I've heard the same thing about Omaha... New Club here, New Club there... I visit Omaha quite often, but I've yet to see any of these clubs??? Do they close that fast?

As for restricting the issuance of licenses... you'll just have to deal. Talk to your council member, see what (if any) they can do to change it, but Buzz is right... find a way to out smart them!

[David]

If you are like us, and are a TRUE Nightclub, the answer is easy. We offer a clean and safe club free of any negatives. We cater to a more sophisticated cliental. Our employees make the club. We only hire those that are friendly and have a real desire to work in our industry. Our demo is 21 to 45 or greater. We have a very upscale decor and offer a very danceable format. Our drink prices are within line of our competition. We have the most expensive cover charge in town and one of the most strictest dress codes around. It took us a while to be come the top dog, almost a year. We created a mission plan and stuck to it. We didn't change things about our operation every week like the others do. People knew what we were offering and what they could expect at our club. We do, however, mix things up a little bit in the music format so that we don't become stale.

Buzz offers some very good info. No matter what type of business you are in, you need to be aware of what the competition is doing and be able to be one step ahead of them.

Be careful on what types of promos that you do. Try and stay away from the Free and Discounted beverages and anything to do with bare skin. Once you create a free or discounted mindset in your customers, it's hard to go back to retail. My best adage "Cheap Drinks Bring In Cheap People". Just look at the major three car companies. They offered 0% interest for five years. Now that the 0% offer is gone, their sales have dropped some 60 to 70%. Now that people know that this offer is possible, they will only buy if they can have the 0% interest rate.

I hope that this info helps. If you can, post what the others are doing to get and keep customers. I have seen almost every customer promotion that is out there. We might be able to help you counter what they are doing.