How can a pool hall stay in business?

i really don't understand how a pool hall can stay in business. this is assuming they don't sell alcohol.

the joints that dont sell alcohol can only depend on table time, soft drinks, and maybe a juke box. how can this possibly be a money making business?

Multiple income streams can help. You can have income from table time, soft drinks, snacks or food, juke box, cue repair, lessons, leagues, retail sales (cues and accessories), other vending machines (candy, medicine, table top video games, video games, dart boards), etc.

Poor management seems to be a huge issue. I've seen people open places that have no clue about the game. They put in some tables and think just opening the doors insure success. Then 6 months later they are out of business. The same with the bar business, just open the doors and collect the money, NOT!
 
I wish I got free table time when I drank beer !!!!

The answer is hidden somewhere in your post!!!:wink:

Hell me and the wife wipe out a couple buckets and about 15 bucks in quarters on a couple hour date playing 9 ball. Where do you play and get free pool just for drinking beer. I might move there.:cool::cool:
 
If they have poker machines then they will be fine.:eek:

Until all of your pool customers are broke to the poker machines and their wives are complaining to the constabulary about illegal gambling devices in your place of business taking the food out of their childrens mouths... lol
 
PH Survival Strategy IMHO:

Buy don't rent, sell alcohol, promote yourself, engage the youth (PE classes will bring them in at night with their allowances), hire hot bartender & waitress, promote yourself again, sell more alcohol, kiss the customers a$$, hold lots of leagues & "cheap" nightly/weekly tourneys tied to all-day/night rates, monthly/quarterly "big added $" tourney with break pot or some other gimmick, encourage ring games or other social gambling, hire hot bartender & waitress when the first ones get pregnant, sell more alcohol, promote yourself again, sell some food to keep people there, kiss the customers a$$, hold high school/middle school grudge matches (who's the best?), keep the jukebox off mute, sell more alcohol & promote yourself.
 
i really don't understand how a pool hall can stay in business. this is assuming they don't sell alcohol.

the joints that dont sell alcohol can only depend on table time, soft drinks, and maybe a juke box. how can this possibly be a money making business?

Until the late '90s the rooms in New York State {the good ones} got by for 30 years or more without selling alcohol. Now they sell beer and wine and still get by without smoking. It's a matter of business management more than anything else. No juke boxes either, by the way. Music low enough so you could just barely hear it. At least, any of the ones I was in for over 25 years.
 
Has anybody mentioned cue sales/repair?



After reading this thread I am surprised that know one has mentioned retail sales and cue repair. When I opened my room in Lakewood, Washington back in 2004 the first thing I did in preparation was check out every room in the entire state. By doing this I gained a great deal of insight and information into what would be profitable and what I was competing against.

Where I grew up in the St. Louis, Missouri one local room stood out in my mind. This room sold retail billiards equipment and I mean everything from Cues, tables along with all the accessories to support them to include installation and repair and they also sold custom Jewelry. Now this is something that no pool room in Washington State did, so I took what I liked and added the above.

I also fully support the local pool leagues in my room and have many teams that play for my establishment. By selling beer, doing repair work, and selling a full range of pool and billiards accessories I have found a niche market that gives me income sources that others have not tapped.

In my opinion billiards / pool rooms have to be a one stop operations that include what the other posters have said along with what I have added. I personally think that for a pool room to be successful they must incorporate what the retail only operations are doing. While many of the retail only operations will be effected it is only business and today if you can't change you will cease to exist.

The days of the Pool rooms that do nothing but rent tables are long gone, the profit margin is no longer there. While having tournaments will bring in people, when the room is adding 100% to the pot their is little room for profit for the room owner, unless they can offer more than food and drink. Everyone needs cue repair, and other merchandise the more you have on hand, the more the items are seen by players, along with great customer service, the better a pool room will do.

Oh and by the way, Location!!!! Location!!!!!! location!!!!!!!, to many rooms appear to open up in areas that are not suitable based upon the area's population and interests. In my opinion this kills as many rooms as opening up a room thinking that you can make money opening a room and just renting tables and selling food and drinks.

JIMO, but it has worked well for me!!!!:)
 
Mosconiac has it I think, I laughed for real at the "get pregnant" comment because I've seen it in two different pool halls.

We recently lost a pool hall in our area. I think it could have made it but the owner had other income and other priorities (his kids, which I don't fault him for).

The pool hall that didn't work out had almost no advertising, didn't sell anything stronger than heinekin, used to have hot bar girls but towards the end had homely middle aged guys, used to have good food but lost it, and had zero action.

The ones that worked have liquor, good food, and one of them is literally like 5 hot girls and one guy. One girl is already replaced after getting pregnant.

I've seen lots of money poured into the video gambling machines but it'd be nice to make money legally >_< ...honestly it seems to be the liquor that does it, and leagues.
 
Mosconiac had a pretty good answer. Diversification is one way to put it. But is it really a pool hall then? You can have a retail store with pool tables, a bar with pool tables, an entertainment venue with pool tables or a strip club with pool tables. If they make money its not because of the pool tables. We rely on our retail store profits to support our billiard parlor. The general public shops for table time based on ONE thing. Cheap table time. So in order to get the public in you have to make money somewhere else. Candy machines, a bar, video poker, retail sales, pay toilets (joke) video games, hot wings and whatever else there is. I really dont know of ONE pool hall that could survive on pool time alone. Never. Rent is too high and table time hovers at prices 15-20 years behind the times. We first raised our prices to $3.60/hour back in 1992. Guess what our table time is now?.....$3.60 hour. Its a business that takes a lot of imagination to turn a profit.
 
Mosconiac had a pretty good answer. Diversification is one way to put it. But is it really a pool hall then? You can have a retail store with pool tables, a bar with pool tables, an entertainment venue with pool tables or a strip club with pool tables. If they make money its not because of the pool tables. We rely on our retail store profits to support our billiard parlor. The general public shops for table time based on ONE thing. Cheap table time. So in order to get the public in you have to make money somewhere else. Candy machines, a bar, video poker, retail sales, pay toilets (joke) video games, hot wings and whatever else there is. I really dont know of ONE pool hall that could survive on pool time alone. Never. Rent is too high and table time hovers at prices 15-20 years behind the times. We first raised our prices to $3.60/hour back in 1992. Guess what our table time is now?.....$3.60 hour. Its a business that takes a lot of imagination to turn a profit.



wow. halls in maryland are at least twice that price per hour.
 
I came up for the past 10 years paying 8 bucks an hour and never thought anything about it. And I will still drop 40 bucks in table time in one day, occasionally.

Then I read about all of these dudes talking about 2 and 3 dollar table time on here... it actually bothers me. Not because I feel like I've been overpaying, but because they've been underpaying. I remember seeing threads where other guys quote 7-8-10 bucks an hour and people would say "that's outrageous, I pay half that!"

What's outrageous is that a pool hall can't survive offering just pool ("This is Ames mister").

Even in the best of them you're gonna have to put up with someone whacking a punching back 10 feet from you, or playing pinball, or hearing bad karaoke at high volumes, or the drunk jock setting his beer on the angled part of the rail. So many people are spoiled on low prices, like they couldn't bear to part with a 20 at the end of a long enjoyable night. The same people probably complain that the cloth only gets changed once a year and will wonder why their local hall is going under in a few years :/

That other thread asked if people would pay 10 bucks a year to support pool. I'd cheerfully pay 10 bucks an hour to support it, if it guarantees good equipment and a nice atmosphere.
 
Pool hall in Illinois close to St louis

We have a room here that you pay $2.00 an hour per person on any table :eek:

Even the double shimmed Diamond Pro :wink:

$2.40 an hour triple shimmed Gold Crown with Simonis 860 cloth which forces you to play good. Well worth the 20 mile drive each way from home.

Get pissed off alot when you miss a ball you would make on bucket tables but it does improve your bar box game. In my humble opinion. Even though I am still a 2.
 
$2.40 an hour triple shimmed Gold Crown with Simonis 860 cloth which forces you to play good. Well worth the 20 mile drive each way from home.

Get pissed off alot when you miss a ball you would make on bucket tables but it does improve your bar box game. In my humble opinion. Even though I am still a 2.

a 2 that practices on triple shimmed gold crowns. sounds like my worst nightmare....
 
stop the nonsense

There are quite a few rooms that make money off alcohol, microwavable snacks, and loud music. Some reserve it for the weekends to bring that crowd in. Its usually the younger crowd that likes to drink while playing pool...and listen to noise blast from speakers. They'll make you money for a while...until your bathroom gets destroyed by graffiti and your carpet painted with throwup. Hard-times in bellflower does not sell alcohol. Snacks include a few microwavable snacks and pizza by the slice. The pizza can be pretty good with a pepsi when you're on the tournament side playing on well kept equipment and respectful players aware of others' playing space. If the jukebox is played, you can hardly here it from the tournament side. This place has been in business for a while because of the loyal pool players that appreciate good service and company from the tournament side.
 
I really dont know of ONE pool hall that could survive on pool time alone. Never. Rent is too high and table time hovers at prices 15-20 years behind the times. We first raised our prices to $3.60/hour back in 1992. Guess what our table time is now?.....$3.60 hour.

That is your fault. You should have had gradual price increases over the years. Even us dumb, uneducated pool players can understand inflation. I haven't been in a pool hall lately that the table rates weren't at least two to three times (not including "happy hour" discounts) the rate you quote.

Maniac
 
Mosconiac made the most sense so far IMO.

OWN the building, hire the hottest chicks you can that don't steal and actually show up, a good location definitely helps.

I always recommend trying to find local businesses that would want to host a pool party for work...a lot of companies have some kind of budget for stuff like this. A party for a couple hours can bring in more money that your average pool player spends in a couple years around here.
 
I've asked that very question of the manager at our local poolroom (18 GC's), and his reply was food and alcohol sales. Table time pays for the light bill and that's about all. As the economy worsens, or at least continues to stagnate, life won't become any better for the room owners either. Although alcohol sales may increase, as it often does in hard times, total sales will probably drop due to an overall decrease in customers and there certainly isn't enough of us regulars to keep the places afloat, so who knows. Let's hope for the best.

Note: I puposely mentioned alcohol in this little diatribe because I don't think you should leave it out of the equation. If you did, every poolhall in the Country would probably go belly-up.
 
how would a room owner make money off of leagues? the leagues i play on are all free table time because we are there drinking beer!!!

Do you pay to pick up your league envelope? Most of the rooms in our larger area each team pays $15 for their envelope. That money goes to the pool room. Also, if a pool room is making $0 on a given night and you bring a league of 8 teams in that play pool and have beer and maybe food. Then a profit is realized by the room owner.

As an example, with 8 teams and 8 players per team.

Envelope price 8*15 = $120 each team player (8) averages a $10 tab for beer etc. $640. So for one night of league the room makes $760 Gross Revenue. Three nights of league and the same assumptions brings the total to $2280. Now with 8 teams that's 4 tables unless there are practice tables. If there are extra tables then some money will come from those being rented out occasionally.

$10 for a bar tab on league night per player is probably way to low and you could probably double that to $20 per person depending on location.

It's also not unheard of for a successful business owner to have multiple businesses one that takes a loss so they can deduct it from their taxes.

Just some thoughts on this.
 
Note: I puposely mentioned alcohol in this little diatribe because I don't think you should leave it out of the equation. If you did, every poolhall in the Country would probably go belly-up.

Not to start an argument, I'm just not sure of the reasoning behind this thinking. Again, the rooms in NYS stayed open for years without alcohol. The place I played in was open better than thirty years before NY allowed pool rooms to sell alcohol. Now, the same rooms are getting by without smoking and it's been said that it couldn't be done without alcohol/smoking.
 
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