What do you all think

D

dirtydog48

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Prices have been discussed to death on this forum, but I am opening a small room with good equipment, 7 Diamond 9', 3 barboxes and a 6 by 12, with reasonable overhead. I would rather have 10 tables running for $3/person than 2 at $8/person. If the equipment and atmosphere are good (no liquor, this is a poolroom, not a bar) with the emphasis on teaching basics for free by capable staff, would you be favorably impressed by these rates:
$3/hr/person noon to midnight everyday
$10 to play noon to 6
$12 to play 6 til midnight
Golf goes to $2/person with over 3 players
private professional instruction (by a recognized pro) for $35/lesson for at least an hour.
I am not looking to get rich, just crack the nut and make a little. Many rooms have failed in this area trying to entertain people, Mark Wilson has the right idea.
Opinions are appreciated...



















4
 
WOW!!! Your prices seem more than reasonable looking at things from a Canadian perspective with our dollar and all.Our pool halls here are basically $6 per hour before 6pm and the price goes up after that from 6 pm onward.

Weekend rates are even higher with a top price of $10 all day on the weekend.We have one pool hall(out in the sticks) that charges $10(per person) all day, however, places like that are very rare for sure.

One pool hall offers me $3 an hour(one person) practice rates and another $15 flat rate between 11 AM to 6 PM. Those are special negotiated rates not given to just anyone.

For sure your low rates and good table selection should attract some people I would hope.Unless of course the people around there have turned into Texas Holdum junkies:D like a lot of our pool players have over here.

Where are you from?

All the best
RJ
 
dirtydog48 said:
Prices have been discussed to death on this forum, but I am opening a small room with good equipment, 7 Diamond 9', 3 barboxes and a 6 by 12, with reasonable overhead. I would rather have 10 tables running for $3/person than 2 at $8/person. If the equipment and atmosphere are good (no liquor, this is a poolroom, not a bar) with the emphasis on teaching basics for free by capable staff, would you be favorably impressed by these rates:
$3/hr/person noon to midnight everyday
$10 to play noon to 6
$12 to play 6 til midnight
Golf goes to $2/person with over 3 players
private professional instruction (by a recognized pro) for $35/lesson for at least an hour.
I am not looking to get rich, just crack the nut and make a little. Many rooms have failed in this area trying to entertain people, Mark Wilson has the right idea.
Opinions are appreciated...


4
Click to expand...


It really all depends on where your room is and what your customers can afford. The prices are ridiculously cheap by New York City standards (I paid $60 for 3.5 hours yesterday at a room I don't normally play in). If you can cover your bills with those rates, then best of luck to you! I'm sure you'll have a happy following!
 
For me those prices seems to be really nice. In the place where i play it goes as follows:

normal rate 8$/hour always BUT one can join the club and get discount prices that way. Then it's 4$/hour and free playing time on sat afternoon and sun evening. Membership fee is less than 10$/month, so it's a pretty nice deal afterall.


Edit: just forgot to mention that price above is table price, not per person.
 
Last edited:
I am a beer tender at a hall here in St. Pete, FL and we charge the following:

2-7 = 2.75 per person/ per hour
7-close = 3.75 per person/ per hour

We have 10 9' tables and 1 9' diamond that is $1 more per hour.

If you are on a league team from here you get 1/2 price anytime.

We have 28 teams in the local APA league alone.

Sunday and Tuesday night are ladies night, ladies play free.

Only serve beer and wine, very limited menu, smoking permited (just not OVER the tables)

For this area, these are fair and actually on low end of average rates. This may sound biased since I work there, but it is the BEST pool room in Pinellas County.

Peace
BDN
 
> Here is my honest opinion about it,as a player myself. If a room that offers what you have on the table was to appear in the town I live in,I'd come to work for you! I had a close friend that ran several successful places,and had an impeccable formula for running things and eventually opening his own place. Although the equipment you are suggesting is better than what he had in mind,your idea is very similar,and I honestly hope it works out 1000 times better than what you expect. Tommy D.
 
Just some thoughts;

I noticed that here in Rochester one of the rooms offer $5 per day period. It does seem however that they pull in pool players that are already playing and practicing in bars and other rooms (not a bunch of rooms to pick from here either) This flat rate works here because the economy is considerably bad.

What this does is take players from other businesses. So were are the new players? Shifting players around one room based upon low rates helps this room out but does nothing for billiards.

I know you are talking rates here, though I feel this is a good time to extend it.

I have found that because billiards is such a small starving niche, it also tends to be a very greedy one. Bottom line is that billiard businesses do very little to promote billiards, instead they try to suck out as much money as they can for themselves.

Looking at the bigger picture;

We have the Valley league, TAP, BCA, APA, tours,.. and each one of these try to demonstrate that they are the premier and governing body, again just moving already players around. Imagine now if we had a real billiards organization overseeing these groups? These groups combined pull in millions each year. Could you imagine if money were pooled together to hire a top notch marketing firm, perform national TV promotions and local benefits?

Given this, each of these groups would most likely see an enormous growth and yes even more profits. Doesn't this make more sense than to pull from the same players all the time and squeezing out as much money as you can from them? It costs millions to market correctly and there is more economic strength when pooled together as one.

This is just the beginning of what could be done and what could be gained.

How could this be done? Actually this could all start from an aggressive small group of members from forums like this one to create this alliance. Next is to get forums to promote a message to everyone to quit playing in their league unless the league were a member of this bigger organization. This would work and would probably take 3 years and lots of struggle, but it would change the industry. The other way is to let the existing organizations figure out how to get this to happen. They just might do that, but I assure you that some will be left out.

Anyway just thoughts here.
 
Thanks for the response!

Your comments are encouraging.
RecJones--we are north of Detroit, a loooong ways from you!
Jude-- We are not ridiculously cheap, NYC is INSANELY expensive. The room is surrounded by about 3000 housholds in a 3 mile radius with a 50-60k median income.
Tommy D.-- Thanks for the good wish, but I will be happy to break even or a little better. By the way, you probably would not like to work here as everyone works for free pool time. As I said, we are LOW budget.
 
Hey Pete

Thanks for the response, I think, but we are small. Your thoughts on national orgaizations and such are wayyyy past what we are doing. We do not care about leagues or recycling players. We are about improving play and developing new players at the grass roots level. Mao started with 800 people in the sticks and took over China.
That being said, I can feel your passion. Good luck Dude!!
 
dirtydog48 said:
Thanks for the response, I think, but we are small. Your thoughts on national orgaizations and such are wayyyy past what we are doing. We do not care about leagues or recycling players. We are about improving play and developing new players at the grass roots level. Mao started with 800 people in the sticks and took over China.
That being said, I can feel your passion. Good luck Dude!!
Click to expand...

I just threw that other stuff in and was outside of this topic, just an opportunity to take notice.

Anyway, I do wish you lots of luck, rather sincere hard work that will result in much success. Thanks for opening a room, this alone gets non players to recognize the sport as they drive by and see another place.
 
Jude Rosenstock said:
It really all depends on where your room is and what your customers can afford. The prices are ridiculously cheap by New York City standards (I paid $60 for 3.5 hours yesterday at a room I don't normally play in). If you can cover your bills with those rates, then best of luck to you! I'm sure you'll have a happy following!
Click to expand...

Wow. At those prices I would be paying out over $400 a week in table time. I would have no choice but to buy my own table.
 
I worked in a ph for 3 years so you can appreciate the fact that I'm not just throwing out some BS.

Not having liguor is probably good but not having beer will cost you a lot of business imho.

Having a flat rate per month for the regulars is a good idea - $80 per month up front allows free time during your slow periods. One of the worst things in a ph is to have one that is empty. When you have people in there playing, it draws other people in. I've seen this happen over and over.

Have as many tournaments and leagues that you can because this will encourage people to come in and practice.

If you can provide food and beverages, that would be a good thing too so they won't leave the ph to get something to eat because once they leave, they seldom come back right away.

Don't be afraid to throw people out for inappropriate behavior because it will help make the ones staying feel safer. Don't 86 someone forever for the first offense. When you kick someone out, start out with a short time frame and be consistent. If they keep acting like a jerk and have been 86'd several times, then tell them not to ever come back.

Have a match-up table close to the counter and have some room around it where people can watch comfortably.

Make sure the place is CLEAN! Good looking women draw guys in and they don't like being in a place where the bathrooms are funky.
 
Rickw said:
I worked in a ph for 3 years so you can appreciate the fact that I'm not just throwing out some BS.

Not having liguor is probably good but not having beer will cost you a lot of business imho.

Having a flat rate per month for the regulars is a good idea - $80 per month up front allows free time during your slow periods. One of the worst things in a ph is to have one that is empty. When you have people in there playing, it draws other people in. I've seen this happen over and over.

Have as many tournaments and leagues that you can because this will encourage people to come in and practice.

If you can provide food and beverages, that would be a good thing too so they won't leave the ph to get something to eat because once they leave, they seldom come back right away.

Don't be afraid to throw people out for inappropriate behavior because it will help make the ones staying feel safer. Don't 86 someone forever for the first offense. When you kick someone out, start out with a short time frame and be consistent. If they keep acting like a jerk and have been 86'd several times, then tell them not to ever come back.

Have a match-up table close to the counter and have some room around it where people can watch comfortably.

Make sure the place is CLEAN! Good looking women draw guys in and they don't like being in a place where the bathrooms are funky.
Click to expand...

Great points. I can only speculate since I do not own a room however based on some comments I've heard from other customers, you hit it on cleanliness. The women's room especially had better be not just spotless but have some glamour to it. Otherwise the next time guys and their girlfriends stop by might be the last. Nothing worse than someone commenting on how filthy a bath room is, they never forget it and tell all their friends about it too.



.
.
 
Pool in my town is $1.50/hour. As you get into Nashville it's $10.00/hour per person.
 
I agree

on the cleanliness, not only the bathroom, but the rest of the room especially the tables and balls.
Thanks for the food thought and it has been hashed over, but due to the limited size, the focus of the room, and the fact there is a great deli/pizza store next door, we cannot justify it.
 
dirtydog48 said:
on the cleanliness, not only the bathroom, but the rest of the room especially the tables and balls.
Thanks for the food thought and it has been hashed over, but due to the limited size, the focus of the room, and the fact there is a great deli/pizza store next door, we cannot justify it.
Click to expand...

Dog,

Wish you luck. You describe a room that I wouldn't mind frequenting.

I hope your rent is low because it sounds like you will be unable to make money on the cash crops most phs rely on...food and alcohol. Tying all of your income to table time & soda is difficult because you have a very hard ceiling on how much you can make. There are, after all, only so many hours in a day and so many tables.

The rates you describe sound very reasonable to me. One question. If you don't plan to have leagues, what will happen to players as you help them get better? Hopefully they won't migrate to another ph, but without organized competition, they might.

Cheers,
RC
 
I will

do leagues and/or tournaments at players' request for the reason you stated. I do not intend to use them to fill the room, that seems counter to the theme.
Thanks for your concern about making money, but about $70/day will cover the nut.
 
new room

I have had my small 8 table room 13 yrs now with no booze, no food, only sodas and snacks. Do not have any leagues and only a few tournaments.
I have done very good over the years and this room first opened in 1978.
My rates are $4.00 pr hr pr person till 6 pm then $4.50 each till close

Now I have a new landlord and might have to move after all this time. I will know by the end of the month, 6 months left on the lease.

Retirement might be in my near future and im only 58.


But good luck in your venture.
 
Jude Rosenstock said:
It really all depends on where your room is and what your customers can afford. The prices are ridiculously cheap by New York City standards (I paid $60 for 3.5 hours yesterday at a room I don't normally play in). If you can cover your bills with those rates, then best of luck to you! I'm sure you'll have a happy following!
Click to expand...

Did the owner kiss you?


No one around here would pay those prices. Especially the ones who moved here from the NE.

Jake
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top