The pool business

Some ideas for a successful billiard club!

The most successful clubs I've seen make 90% of revenue over the bar. These are social clubs.

To encourage this:
1. Don't crowd the room with pool tables. Have enough stools and round drink tables around so that many tables can hold 6 people as a group.
2. Have active service girls to deliver drinks.
3. Have free or cheap entry random or mixed doubles competitions to win a $100 drink card or table time. This gets strangers playing together which mixes the crowd and creates new friendships. Meaning many people will begin to come in, even if alone, because they know the regulars.
4. Sometimes run a special free table, winner stays on (maybe for limit of 5 frames), perhaps with some small prizes. (This also allows the people to get to know each other and to know the names of the other players so they are more confident to chat.
5. Don't have low seats! They make it hard to get up and down, play and move around.
6. Have good music or good juke box.
7. As in the hotel business, the key is atmosphere and much of that originates from the management style. A grumpy manager will have a grumpy staff and all round grumpy atmosphere.

There are many other aspects, but if you get these right, you have could have a great business:)
 
Some great ideas, thanks all.
Colin, really like some of your ideas especially, thanks.
Here are a few plans I had in mind above and beyond friendly staff, clean washrooms, clean tables etc.

Providing a private room for clubs or offices to have catered meetings or events, such as sports teams, car clubs etc.

Developing the early trade with specials on for lunches, there are a lot of businesses near by.

Seniors discounts.

Sports nights with door prizes.

Making the room league friendly with space for seating all the team players.

Expanding the food preperation area, bar and seating.

please keep the ideas coming, thanks again.
 
yes sir,

Pelican said:
Consider hosting some seniors tournaments. We may be old be we still like to play :D
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old but everything still works. Count me in pelican.
blud
 
The one thing i have noticed, expecially with people today is price per hour.

In my town there is two pool houses. the one i goto Golden 8 ball charges 1.85 per hour/ per person. Has food, no liquor, drinks, video games.

The other place, charges 8$ per hour, doesnt matter if its just you or 5 people at the table. But it also has food, capucino's, internet, and video games n food, I dont know if it has liquor.

But, its like ok, which one are you going to wanna goto? I mean obviously i am going to goto the GOLDEN 8, and only pay 1.85 per hour lol. I am there to shoot pool not, drink a Mocha, or get online.

Plus, i have gotten to know the owner of the Golden 8 pretty well, in the past couple months, since i have become a regular.

plus, most of the guys i shoot pool with, goto Golden 8 also.

Now i also heard that a 3rd pool hall was going to open in the next couple months too, that is suppose to be a high class place. So who knows what they will charge lol. But they are suppose to be connected to a restuarant with a bar.

the one thing i would look at when you plan on opening this place, is how much your going to charge per person or per hour. I would check out any other places in the area and see what they charge and maybe under cut them a bit.
 
StormHotRod300 said:
The one thing i have noticed, expecially with people today is price per hour.

In my town there is two pool houses. the one i goto Golden 8 ball charges 1.85 per hour/ per person. Has food, no liquor, drinks, video games.
Click to expand...
That's a pretty big difference. does the Golden 8 have painted walls and clean restrooms? That sounds like a joke, but it's not.

Is there a difference in the tables? It seems like there must be for there to be such a disparity in pricing.

Say you had 20 tables, and they stayed busy 10 hours per day (a stretch). At 2.00 per table, that's 40.00/hr for 10 hours, or 400.00/day. Obviously this is not going to pay rent, help, taxes, improvements, etc, let alone recovering the tables when they get hammered.

Now we add food, food help, health inspections, employee training, food cost, wastage, the square footage we have to devote to food instead of pool, etc...

A pool room cannot really make a go of it on table fees alone, even at 6.00/hr. Your room must have something else as a revenue generator than 1.85/hr pool, or they have dirt cheap rent.

-CM
 
You will be successful if you get a core of loyal customers. Do that and you will survive any economic downturns. There are great poolrooms in this country that are thirty years old, pool rooms that have survived wars, disasters and recessions.

You can do it.

John
 
Mergers & Acquisitions - Financial Due Diligence

Slasher said:
I am putting the fine points on buying a billiard hall, supposed to be signing on tuesday and collecting the keys.
Thing is, having seen so many rooms go under lately, I'm getting cold feet.
It's a nice room, looks like it did okay in past years, rent is as good as it gets. However I cant seem to get past the downturn in the billiard business.
Am I being over cautious?
Click to expand...


Good afternoon:

The acquisition of any business requires a significant amount of due diligence, especially with a cash driven business. If the corpration's, or for that metter the individual's TAX RETURNS do not show sufficient cash flow to supoort operations your purchase could prove problematic. However, if the financial side of the house has been reviewed by a competent financial professional, not your CPA, you will have the information you need to make an informesd decision.

Dr. D.
 
Slasher said:
I am putting the fine points on buying a billiard hall, supposed to be signing on tuesday and collecting the keys.
Thing is, having seen so many rooms go under lately, I'm getting cold feet.
It's a nice room, looks like it did okay in past years, rent is as good as it gets. However I cant seem to get past the downturn in the billiard business.
Am I being over cautious?
Click to expand...

Slasher,
Like most of us, I envy you too. There was a point last year when I thought about opening a room but then I got laid off... well dont have to go in detail. What I had in mind was a pool hall/entertainment center with lots of TVs and stuff. Im not sure what kind of room you are getting but here are some of my ideas based on the room that I wanted.
1) Have a full bar and kitchen
2) If you city allows it, make it so that you dont alienate the under age clientle.
3) Have lunch specials
4) Hold weekly tournaments and leagues.
5) Once a month, hold a big tournament with added money.
6) Hold a dart league/tournament
7) Have a section for arcade games
8) Have an up to date selection of music
9) Shuffle board
10) Have a couple of private rooms with pool tables in it.
11) Besided having just 9ft tables, have a few 7ft bar boxes.

Hope that helps and good luck to you.
 
Awsome, thank you all very much for the support and great ideas, now if I can just get a good nights sleep around here I will get back to my number crunching, been a hard couple a weeks :) le me tell ya.
ps I will break news next Wednesday if it's a done deal, watch this space :)
 
HighSea

yes, it does have painted walls and a clean restroom, and yes you would think stuff like that is a given in almost any place, but i guess not lol.

Well i didnt mention stuff like the owner, does do cue repairs, IE new tips, ferrules, shaft reconditioning, and as far as having employees, really he is the only one who works there, he has two girls who i know, who work just parttime, when like on the weekends, or the days he has tournaments, to just help out with drinks and food n stuff.

I know he does set up web sites for people and companies too, so i am sure he is making money from that too. I think he set one up for Blud,,,and i do believe he got a custom cue from Blud outa the deal, but not sure.

And his food area, is small, so its really not a monster section, but it does serve its purpose of making food n stuff.

I am sure he does make money, or he wouldnt be in business lol.
 
the pool bussines

Slasher; I sort of backed into the pool room bussines about5yrs ago, a freind had a room for his two sons,one choose to go tom collage, the other no intrest in it go he was stuck with one yr lease. he and his girlfreind had to run it after regular jobs. he gives me a call as i am retired, ask me if would me instred in running it any thing i made over lease was mine. make a long story short, he got out after lease, i have 5yrs as owner. doing great. secret be good to your reg players. they a the ones that payes your rent.help anyway i can "STICK"
 
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