Ideas for more ways to make money in a pool room

kevin s

kevin s

Tennessee
Silver Member
I have a chance to take over an existing pool room close by. I would like some ideas on ways to increase revenues. In my home pool room there are several things they make money on. Here are some of them.
-table time ( obv.)
-food ( no alcohol)
-mega touch (counter top game) does real well here
-golden tee golf game (at times does well)
-pro shop ( how much should inventory is needed and do repair work)
-electronic dart boards ( dart leagues seem to do good)
-pool leagues
-weekly tournaments

Just a few basics. What makes you money thats isn't so obvious? I believe you have to offer folks a reason to come besides just pool. You know they will buy food and drink and spend some money. I have heard of some doing UFC nights,free poker tournaments (with a small prize). What else am I missing?
 
Kevin,
Without alcohol you will need to have sales. Do not rely on table time to pay your bills. My advice would be to make your buisness plan without any inome frome table time and video games. Can you sell enough food, drink, cues, and cases and be profitable? You may need to tweek your plan a bit to make it work. Do you do cue repair or table install? This could be the added revenue to keep you in the black. RKC will be doing a class at the end of the month. My brother is going up for it. I am banking on this plan to work for us so we can open a room and sell tables, lights, cues. We will start small and work off cash flow. I have been in the restaurant buisness for 19 years and I will use that experience for this venture.
Good luck to you!!!!!!
 
Last edited:
Good Luck to you as well...

Slate Billiards said:
Kevin,
Without alcohol you will need to have sales. Do not rely on table time to pay your bills. My advice would be to make your buisness plan without any inome frome table time and video games. Can you sell enough food, drink, cues, and cases and be profitable? You may need to tweek your plan a bit to make it work. Do you do cue repair or table install? This could be the added revenue to keep you in the black. RKC will be doing a class at the end of the month. My brother is going up for it. I am banking on this plan to work for us so we can open a room and sell tables, lights, cues. We will start small and work off cash flow. I have been in the restaurant buisness for 19 years and I will use that experience for this venture.
Good luck to you!!!!!!
Click to expand...

The main benefit for me is that the total overhead for the business is around 1200 a month. That includes rent,electric,water,cable,phone, internet service,trash pick up and insurance. I think I can make it work. It's a small place with 8 tables and room for a couple more.

Here's a some more things I have thought of...
-clothing (shirts,hats,jackets,etc)
-pool accesories (all small things pool related tip picks and shapers...etc.)

There has to be some ideas out there..
 
Heres a couple things I use

Coupons for free time, get a punch for every hour played get 10 punches get One hour Free
Another one is play 30 hours get a whole day free, They love them at my room.

Daily discount, pay in advance play from open till 6 pm for ??.??
Ladies 1/2 price on wednesdays 8-close

Low priced Memberships available but not necessary to play, $15.00 one time fee,
Play free on your birthday, not the day before or the day after, they try that to lol.
10 % Discount on cues , cases, & special member specials you decide on once in a while.

I have a cue raffle every year on my anniversary, start selling tickets shead of time at $1.00 each. and draw the winner around 8 pm that night, there here waiting for the draw and playing to. I also raffle off tip tappers, cue cubes and low priced cues to.

Give your steadys a coffee or drink free once in a while it always comes back to you.

I also have a t-shirt day 3 or 4 times a month, come in wearing one of our t-shirts and get 20% off table time. they usually forget the correct day. lol

hope this helps.

mickey scott highrun55
d&d family billiards
 
First thing is find out WHY you are taking it over. See the books for the past 5 years. Why is business going down? Or not going up? Are there regulars that hang out or regulars that spend money? There is a huge difference.

One thing I am happy I did is to have manual vending machines. No electric. Stock them yourselves. Both candy bar venders and bulk machines that vend handful of nuts or jelly beans etc. Once a month you end up with couple hundred dollars in quarters.

Good luck in your business adventure!!!!:smile:
 
Tennessee Pool Rooms

My son run a pool room less than 50 miles from you without beer sales.He had 5 bar tables and two 9ft. Olhausen champion pros.He had a grill-fryer and sold more food than I thought he would.He opened his room after high school at 18 yrs old,stayed open for 5 yrs,closing at christmas last year because the owner wanted to raise his rent from 600 to 800 a month. He could have surived,but was getting tired of working all time.
Money Makers other than talked about earlier.
C-D JUX-BOX
POKER MACHINES-paid rent plus ever month....
Football Cards in fall.
 
I'm not a room-owner, but many of the pool rooms around my area are installing internet juke-boxes.

I don't know how profitable it is, but there must be something to it if so many are installing them.

It's definitely worth some research.
 
Internet juke boxes are popular because they are cheaper to maintain and played more often. You have endless pics of songs not just a couple hundred. YOu never have to polish the cds you never have to update the play list. Its done automatically. The vendors know this and charge you a bit more for it. Because they also have to pay for the internet connection.
 
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