An opportunity has come up to lease a bar/pub and possible cafe in our neighborhood. I come from a wholesale accounts management, some events planning, and hospitality industry background and my partner is an engineer and Jack of all trades. However neither of us have prior experience with running a bar/ cafe. My partner is being overly optimistic while I’m trying to be the realistic one.
While the location is perfect and the previous bar was popular on game days (it’s located right outside a football stadium), my main concern is the size of the space. With over 4000 sqft of indoor space, the building has 4 function rooms, 3 separate bars, a kitchen, plus an outdoor beer garden set up type space.
The first 2 months are rent free and we’ve budgeted about 20k-30k pounds so about 27-40k usd up front for painting and furnishings just to get it started. We’d start with 10 staff and have the cafe running 6 days a week and the pub on weekends only (Friday, Saturday, Sunday). When we get everything up and running we then plan to renovate the function rooms and use them for events, rentals, etc.
As complete novices I’m having my doubts as to the costs of running such a large place. I have brought up a lot of the cons to my partner but he is still full steam ahead and wanting to take the deal.
Please give it to me straight. What are the most important things to know when leasing a large pub/cafe and what are the biggest problems/ downfalls we can encounter?