How to Own a Poolhall?

[middleofnowhere]

Well Pool is not thriving like it was 10-15 years ago.

In Phoenix Arizona the list of Pool Rooms & Bars with Pool tables is long. That all closed.

Think over 15 are gone, and mambe 1 or 2 new places opened.

So let’s say opening a New Pool Room is risky venture.

There is an old joke about a guy going to a town with no car washes. He thought, wow what a great place to open a carwash. I would be the only one in town. After opening he learned why there were no carwashes in that town.

 

[jtompilot]

Owning the building is not the secret really. I had two rooms and rented both. One is still open 40 later. At the same time I had a building that would have made a perfect pool room, 6000 sqft and a lot of parking on a main road. It was never even a consideration.

The building was rented to an armed navy store for $6000.00 a month. And they were great tenents. Always paid on time with no problems. Running a business in a building you own is not free. Right off the top you have to take into account what you could get from it just sitting at home without the headache of running something like a a pool room.

Having said that I do have a formula for opening a pool room that works. I helped to different guys open rooms that were both successful. I don't think the op was really serious and won't bother writing it out in this thread.

All that is true but plenty of rooms have closed at least partly because of uncontrolled rent increases or landlord sold the building to developers.

 

[doitforthegame]

Yeah it has it's up sides...but having owned a room from 2017-2023 I will mention the issues.

- Your pool playing friends will expect special consideration...in fact they may be the worst behaved of the pool playing regulars.

-Employees may love working at a pool hall because they can hit balls for hours and give free things to their buddies. Real hard to get reliable help who will work until 3am and not rob you blind.

-The general public sucks. No concept that Simonis cloth on a 9 foot is $450 installed. Billiard cloth...worse.
They will soil every table within the first 3 months. You will learn how to clean an entire table.
IV drugs in the bathroom.
Missing 8 and 9 balls.
Property destruction for no reason.

- I survived the covid shutdowns....flourished actually....but know government at all levels despises a pool hall.

-You aren't ever "off". Problem comes up,it is yours to solve. Better be mechanically inclined and good at drywall/painting.

-Pool players...especially retired ones are the cheapest form of life on earth. They want 1 hour or less special, even when there's already an 8 dollar play all day. ..Half orders of home cooked food for half price...and a glass of tap water.

Upsides
-It's a cash business and you sell time....do the math.
-Losing money in a pool hall is a fantastic thing if it offsets what your day job pays if you make good money.
-You play a part in promoting pool as it should be in your area, but you get an up close view of how pool goes nowhere, turns into something unrecognizable or just dies.

I worked full time days in my medical job and 4 nights a week....17 hour days for years. Not for anyone without the drive to get there.

Oh my God you just brought me back to my time having the "time of my life". The shaking will stop shortly I hope.

 

[overlord]

If you are gonna start a room in a town like LA and you want to buy the building, you have to have a lot of capital.

The greatest impediment in buying an existing room, is the pool room owners.

They will BS you..............

Most of them will not hand over tax returns.

 

[couldnthinkof01]

If you are gonna start a room in a town like LA and you want to buy the building, you have to have a lot of capital.

The greatest impediment in buying an existing room, is the pool room owners.

They will BS you..............

Most of them will not hand over tax returns.

What?

"I would like to buy your business."
"Let's look at the books."
"No."
"Good times"

 

[middleofnowhere]

All that is true but plenty of rooms have closed at least partly because of uncontrolled rent increases or landlord sold the building to developers.

Yeah that can happen, but it doesn't usually happen overnight you know pretty much in advance when something like that's going to occur. Important thing is that you have no debt. Everything under that roof belongs to you Lock stock and barrel free and clear. You would hate to but you may have to move you can.

In the same respect what you describe the landlord doing such as selling the property to a developer can happen to you also if you own the building. At a point the property may not actually justify anymore housing a pool room.

A developer comes along and offers you a million + for the property, you will probably go out that front door so fast and tell him he can have a pool tables. That's just the way life works. There's never a guarantee.

There used to be a guy in Miami named Brownie. Some people on here may know who I'm talking about. He was somewhat famous for spinning the cue ball. He would bet all kinds of propositions. Weenie beanie used to bet with him very often when he was in town.

He's an old guy. He had about a dozen pool tables.Over the years I know him they were probably in at least three different poolrooms.

He can move a pool room faster than you could imagine. That a little refers to what I said in my other post about a formula to open a pool room.
Owning all your equipment outright with no debt storage somewhere maybe in a warehouse before you ever even have a location to put it.

All of the tables don't have to match they just have to be good commercial quality that you can pick up here and there over time. You give me a year I'll guarantee you I have everything required to open a pool room for like 20 cents on the dollar maybe less down to the last barstool..

These guys who go to the BCA show and make some deal with a pool table manufacturer and walk away like 150 Grand in debt before they've even started are guaranteed to fail. And then they open a room that's too big and elaborate like some kind of monument to themselves and then they go broke in 2 years.

A room that I sold which is now 42 years ago is still open and operating. It was 12 tables a beer service bar a few pinball machines and that was it only required 3600 square feet and I was open 24 hours a day. I just had to stop serving alcohol at 2:00 a.m.

This place was really a tight run operation. Small profitable one employee could run the whole place at any given time the rent was a reasonable. I had multiple clientele based on the hours. There was people that came in every day who probably never met other people who came in every day cuz they kept different hours.

My pool room was like something out of the past, like a room you might have walked into in a 1940s. I bought it it originally opened in 1959. When I bought it it didn't have a beverage license I managed to through some legal maneuvering put the beverage license in.

Which to be honest I knew I could do when I bought it the previous owner just didn't know how to go about it. In Fact he tried to sue me claiming that I stole his business but that didn't go anywhere.

I said quite a bit in the this posting but you can read between the lines and I see a pool room as a pool room. Not a palace not a monument just a place to come play the game and have some cold beer, low overhead if possible and easy to run as possible and no debt.

You're not going to get rich running a pool room as was said by someone in a previous posting here basically you're buying yourself a job, hopefully a good paying one. In my case that one little room was in fact by every definition gold mine.
My main point and I can't say it enough is no debt. You have to at any point if need be pack everything up put it in the warehouse and do it again somewhere else if you choose to. There's no guarantees in life.

 

[middleofnowhere]

I guess I got on the subject and I just can't stop. I have a friend who opened a very nice bar. Unfortunately he's dead now the bar is still there though. You would not believe what you can get for nothing if you start looking. He found a shopping center that was being demolished and they were able to go in there and salvage anything they wanted.

They got every single thing they needed to build the bar from wood paneling, barstools, bathroom fixtures. There was a lounge had been in the shopping center they were able to dismantle the bar and take it. This thing was beautiful it must have cost thousands when it was built.

They got all sorts of lighting fixtures and I just can't go on with everything that they they got out of that place but it was enough to build the entire bar for relatively nothing. New coolers might be the only thing they really had to spring for.

Start to finish from the time they started the project and he had a location three months the doors were open and he was like hardly nothing out of his pocket. I just throw this out there as food for thought.

 

[GoldCrown]

The op is a clueless dreamer. There is NO way i'd open one UNLESS: i owned the building. No fkn way i'd pay rent. If you own the building and the business sux you sill have some equity. Would also have to be more of a sportsbar with tables to make any $$. A true old-school 'hall really has little chance of surviving. Possible under certain circumstances but rare.

To own a pool room is buying a job. Unless the principles have good business skills do not bother.

 

[middleofnowhere]

To own a pool room is buying a job. Unless the principles have good business skills do not bother.

You see that commonly with businesses that get passed down to another generation. Some business that's been in the family for 40 years the next generation runs into the ground into.

The one thing that looks easy that isn't is nobody understands the number of hours that are actually put in. I had a friend was very wealthy who owned a trucking company and people used to always say derogatory things about him, this Rich sob and all that.

His wife could tell them when they owned one truck and they'd be out there 2:00 in the morning her holding the light as he is working to keep this thing running. Sometimes people just fall into something and are very lucky but generally it takes a lot of hard work that others never see.

 

[SSP]

I really want to start a pool hall as well... And a School For Pool! Sounds like a dream to me . I am in the mountains of Colorado, and we don't have anything around us like that at all.... Build it, they will come?

Unfortunately, probably not, do some quick math, how many tables would you need being used just to pay rent/mortgage ? Start there, most successful halls are in/near bigger cities where there is more opportunity for clientele.