Boost Bar Profits with Weekly Events: Strategies for Bar Owners

So when you think about most bars around the world and this is especially true none of the high-end bars , but of your neighborhood bars , your dive bars , your pubs there are events throughout the week that happen every week , that help to bring in a crowd .

And when I say that and we'll go through specific examples and talk about them in some detail , but I'm thinking things like karaoke , trivia , bingo , poker , car games , industry nights , food-driven specials , live music , things of that nature , and we're going to walk through all those in a few different other examples and kind of explain how you can make these events

work for your bar , why you might want them or not want them and some of the pitfalls associated with each of these different types of events .

Now , the main reason why you're going to want to have events on a weekly basis in your bar and again , this is not true of the higher-end bars , but definitely our dive bar , neighborhood bar , pub , bar segment this is almost a requirement .

Not much everybody does it and regardless of where you are in the world , there's something like this that bars in your areas are going to do Now . Obviously , poker may be more of an American thing , but trivia , as we all know , is something that happens all over the world .

Pub trivia is just as common in the UK as it is in the US , so it is kind of universal . Obviously , again , some events may be different and some of this , even if we're talking within the United States , is going to be location-specific .

Some areas are going to have more popularity on one type of event than others , so you do have to fit this to your location , your clientele . But in general , it's important that you have events that happen every week because those are going to bring in additional business .

And it brings in consistent additional business that happens every week that you can forecast above and beyond your normal business . It's also a great way to help you build an additional clientele base , to bring people into your establishment that otherwise never would have come in .

And we'll get into a really fun example , towards the end of a podcast , of a very unique event that I hosted at one of my bars that actually drove a whole bunch of business and had people driving in from literally states away .

Now , before we go down the road of talking about specific events one of the best things about events and I kind of touched on this a second ago .

But if you have space in your bar , if you have a bar or pub large enough that you have a few different areas or can control an event in the back half of your room and leave the front half of your room open , especially on a slower night like a Tuesday , a Wednesday , a Thursday evening , now you have a way to generate additional revenue that you would not

have and serve your existing normal customers that would come in on that night . What you don't want to do is to have events that alienate your existing customers , have events that stop you from building regulars that don't want to participate in those events because that's not going to work for you in the long run .

In the bar business , right , obviously , we're getting people that are regulars , that are coming in not once a week but every day of the week or three or four days out of the week . We want to make sure those people are still welcome and invited and feel good coming in .

There are definitely some times when events and different entertainment , rather than helping to give you additional business on top of your normal business , drive some of that normal business away . We'll touch on that as well towards the end of this episode . Always think of it as a value add .

Again , if you have the space , it's great because you can have your normal business , especially for those slower nights . You can condense down those normal regulars to 50% of your space and then use the additional space to have a fun event or something going on to drag in this additional business .

Again , this is something we're thinking of mostly on weeknights , Maybe weekend nights too , it depends upon the event . For instance , karaoke . We'll start with karaoke , one that I personally in my bars made a lot of money on , and I've seen a lot of other bars make a lot of money on it as well .

Karaoke we did on Friday nights and so it was our biggest night of the week and karaoke was a large part of that . We weren't doing poker on Friday night . We weren't doing trivia on Friday night because those did not have the same draw as karaoke . We use those during the week .

So if your trivia is every Wednesday and Wednesday's normally a slower night for you , well , now if you can get four or five teams of people that are five or six people each , well , that's an additional 20 , 30 folks that would not have been in your bar otherwise .

And if your trivia has points and culminates in a grand prize or a trophy or something down the road , you're going to pull those people in not just one week but week after week after week , and trivia is one of those things where , in particular , people get a little bit passionate , let's say , about their trivia and winning and building up those cumulative points

week to week . But we'll get to trivia in a second . Let's go back to karaoke . So karaoke is probably one of the more popular weekly bar events that any bar does , especially in the US . Can't speak French . I have the US , but here where I am in Indiana , a lot of bars are doing karaoke every week .

It is hugely popular and frankly , it can be quite fun . Obviously , anytime you're doing karaoke you're going to have some singers that are just abysmal . You're also going to have other singers that are fantastic and that people really , really enjoy watching .

One of the bars that I had was just down the street from a dinner theater and they always did musicals at this dinner theater . And what was great is on Friday nights the cast after they got done with their show and cleaned up and about one o'clock in the morning they would all show up at my bar .

So from one to two when we cut the karaoke off , we had just professional singers singing . Most of the time we had our regular bar folks as well . We also had all these professional singers in , and so it was really really good music . Now , sometimes the type of music you know .

Not all bar folks like show tunes , and there were definitely some show tunes when you have a bunch of people that sing musicals . Overall , though , it really made that last hour kind of nice because it was really really good singers . But you're not always going to have that and that's okay .

The thing is , karaoke is fun , it's interactive , it brings people in the door and gives them something to do . Now , something to consider with karaoke , and there are a lot of different ways to do karaoke .

And I will tell you right now the way that we did karaoke was quite a bit different than how most people do it , and actually for a Friday night crowd , it worked way , way better , and that was we did not just do karaoke straight through .

Our karaoke DJ also worked essentially as a DJ , so we would have four , five singers in a row and then he would just play some music . That music broke up the singers , it broke up the karaoke . It gave everybody a break . It also allowed people because we had a lot of industry folks coming in after work .

It gave them a chance to dance , especially when you had group dances that are popular . So it wasn't just karaoke , it was karaoke with a little bit of DJ stuff going on and it worked in a way that really drove business .

And it appealed not just to the karaoke folks , not just to the industry folks that were looking to dance and have some fun on hand on each other . It appealed to all of those groups . Did it make some people mad ?

Because it wasn't one or the other , absolutely , but overall it allowed us to have a crowd that ranged from 21 to about 80 of consistent regulars every Friday night . That crossed pretty much every demographic group and everyone normally had a fantastic time .

So don't feel limited by how things have been done in the past because , as I'm sure , a lot of you have been to a bar where they are just doing straight karaoke , and straight karaoke with a lot of not so great singers gets old really , really quick , and so , by breaking it up , we had this wonderful experience that made more people happy with what was going

on and actually really did a great job driving that business week after week after week . So karaoke , if you're in the Midwest , if you're in the US , is fricking fantastic and I think , something that most bars should look at doing . After karaoke , one of the big events that you see a lot of bars do is trivia . Trivia is great .

It's interactive and , like I mentioned before , if you can make it a trivia tournament , a trivia season , where teams build points over time and those points built over time lead to a finals , some of the trivia companies out there will even do things like have local , regional , state .

I think some are even the point now where the trivia companies themselves are large enough to do national finals on trivia . That is amazing . That gives people something to shoot for and it gives them a reason to be in their seat every week drinking a beer at your bar . So trivia is a great one .

Now again , I would not necessarily do trivia on a weekend night . It's not going to necessarily bring in folks , but it may . For a while we did have trivia on Saturday nights and I'll tell you what it worked . It worked well because it had been in place and existing that way for about 10 years Now . We had some changes that happened in our demographics .

We had some changes that happened in what programming and what events we wanted to do in the bar , and we ended up moving trivia to Thursday , and it worked well there too .

So it's not like anything cannot work multiple ways , but it is important to look at how much business you already have coming in the door and then , is this supplementing this business or is this pushing some people away ? Because on a Saturday night you don't want to push people away . On a Friday night you don't want to push people .

Trivia in general is a great thing to consider , and the real key with trivia is to get trivia hosts that are intelligent , that have good questions . Now that could be a large company . That could be a single person that just happens to do trivia . I've seen both .

Both can work very , very well , but it's really about finding the right fit , the right type of trivia for your bar . Now let's take a step back here real quick and talk about how much should we be paying for these events ? And here's the thing , if we think about this logically , the target net profit for a bar that I've always gone for is 15% .

Now , whether it's 15% , whether it's 20% , whether it's 10% , he is not really relevant . Let's just say it's 15% . And let's , for the sake of easy math , say on a Friday without or a Thursday , I don't care on a day without X event , you would bring in $10,000 . Now you run that event and you bring in $12,000 .

And the question is you brought in $2,000 more . It cost you , say , $200 . That's 10% . Well , if your margin is 10% , you've broken even . You're okay . If your margin is 15% , you've made a little bit of extra money .

And with any of these events , when you're looking at the additional people coming in your door , the business that you would not otherwise have assuming that you are not chasing your other business away right , that's key to this whole thing . We never want to chase away the business that is not there for the event .

But if we can break even on the payment of the event , it's absolutely worth it every time . And the main reason is butts in seats creates excitement . People don't like sitting in a large empty bar .

So if you have a bunch of people there and they're playing a game and they're having fun , it's okay to break even on that additional incremental revenue coming in the door because it'll help attract other people and those folks that come in for trivia or karaoke or poker .

Those folks are more likely to come in on an other night as well , because now they've made a habit of coming to your bar on a weekly , semi-weekly basis . So it doesn't have to make money , but it does have to break even . That's key to all of this .

If you're in a situation where you're spending $300 to make an extra $500 in revenue , so you're only making let's just call it 75 bucks in profit at a 15% margin . That doesn't work . You're losing $225 . So we have to be absolutely clinical about the math when it comes to running extra events .

And again , breaking even is great Breaking even , especially when you have servers that rely on tips . That means they are bringing more money . You're not making more money as the bar , but your servers are ringing more money and because your servers are ringing more money , they're getting more tips , they're happier , you are busier .

You might even be able to bring in an extra server that night and that's going to help everyone on your staff . Your team is going to be able to make more money . Your team is going to have a higher morale , you hopefully can be able to employ more people even though you're just breaking even , and that's okay .

But if you're losing money on event , that's never okay and hopefully on these things you're spending 200 bucks to make an additional four , five , 600 bucks net and it's really working in your favor . But that doesn't always happen and breaking even is okay . So , looking past trivia , what are some other things that we can do ?

Well , one really popular thing in the United States right now is bingo or music bingo . It is huge , and that's the other thing I should mention . Ten years ago , 15 years ago , music bingo in the area that I am really wasn't a thing .

Now it's huge , and so sometimes you're going to have to adjust these entertainment options , adjust this program and adjust these weekly events to fit the changes and the trends in your market . You can't just do the same thing for 20 years and expect it to always work . Sometimes it requires change .

But Bingo , musicbingo , are fantastically hot right now and they're great events and you can do those on one of those slower nights and still drive people in . They're great . Another thing to consider , something I had a lot of success with but not everyone does and it's not legal . Everywhere is poker or card games .

In Indiana , where I am , we could run poker games as long as there was no buy-in and no cash involved . We couldn't give cash prizes , but we could not collect cash or have any buy-in from the guests in order to play the game . Now , we did have a rules for poker that said you have to purchase something to play .

You have to at least buy a drink , because our winner every week got 50 bucks cash , our second place got a $25 gift certificate , our third place got a $10 gift certificate . So we were giving things away and there were real prizes for people at the end of the day , but we could not charge people a buy-in .

Now , obviously , depending upon the state you're in , maybe you can do that , maybe you can't , and always when you're looking at card leagues , card tournaments , look at what your local game is . So we always had poker Texas Hold'em very standard , and we were doing this when poker was hot , was on TV , when World Series of Poker was a big thing .

So it worked really well with what people wanted to do and what people wanted to see . There are also , though , in a lot of places you go , there are regional card games , regional dice games , regional games of all sorts , and you can do the same thing with one of those .

So maybe it's spades , or maybe here in Indiana , in the Midwest , you're going to have a lot of Euker . Maybe it's P-Nuckle it doesn't matter what that game is , but if there's a game that people play regularly , a card game , in your area , you can have a night where you can have a tournament for that game .

And , just like with trivia , you can take a poker game , a card game , and make it build over time with points and tournaments and all sorts of things . We used to do a quarterly poker tournament that invited in not only folks from my bar but folks from a few other bars .

The guy that was running our poker was running games at those bars as well and we would have kind of a champions tournament once a quarter , and then once a year we would have a larger tournament . And again , this was all free , but there were requirements based upon how many of the poker games you want at these individual bars to get into these tournaments .

I cannot emphasize enough , though make sure it is legal , make sure that you are not putting yourself in a position to have illegal gaming or what the state sees as illegal gaming in your establishment . Obviously , if you have questions , right , you can talk to Xs , you can talk to the cops .

They generally at least every interaction I've ever had with them everywhere they've been very positive and they've been very helpful in saying yeah , you can do this . No , you can't do that . Sometimes they may be a little bit conservative but that's okay because if you know , if you follow what they are telling you , you're not going to get in trouble .

Another thing that is a great weekly event is having an industry night , and we did an industry night on Mondays because most people in hospitality are off Sunday Monday , right Friday Saturday is not a weekend for us , but Sunday Monday is , and where my bar was , we got a lot of folks actually all the bars that I've ever had for some reason to become industry

bars and we would get a lot of folks from all the restaurants around coming in after work getting food . I think that's part of the reason is we had food late but getting food hanging out , and so Mondays we would do industry nights and for industry nights we would just kind of come up with random stuff .

Week to week we had cornhole tournaments , we would do random giveaways , sometimes we would do trivia type things , but the idea was to have something fun , something enjoyable for those folks in the industry , and we actually had a couple of folks that worked at other establishments around us , that worked at some of these corporate restaurants and things that were our

regulars coming in . That helped us plan things to do and we were very reactive to what the industry people told us they wanted to experience , and that meant that we could have this great Monday night crowd and , as most of you are aware , monday nights pretty much always suck . So it worked really well in our favor .

Now the thing is to keep that event special , because the industry night was not something that week after week after week work necessarily . We would just do it in the summer . So it was kind of this fun summer thing we did on Monday nights , and during the winter we didn't even bother because it was cold and people weren't that interested .

So you can always have weekly events or bi-weekly events that are seasonally based as well , because that's when you're getting that incremental business that makes it worth the time and effort . Now , one thing that a lot of bars don't focus on , and I understand very well , there are a lot of bars out there that don't serve food at all .

But if you do serve food , you can have a food-driven night to bring people in the door . I've talked about this before , but one thing I've always done with my bars was I had a steak night , and steak night was a cheap iceberg salad , a baked potato and a good steak , and it was dirt cheap pricing . I'm talking about a decade ago .

I'll also point out how bad the inflation has been in the last 10 years . But a decade ago we were doing a 14-ounce ribeye baked potato salad all in for 12 bucks and that price obviously went up as beef is gone up . Now it'd probably be 20 bucks , not 12 , but we were essentially breaking even on those .

But because people knew they could get a great steak , have a great meal it was inexpensive they would flock in On a Tuesday night . We would probably have 20 or 30 people without doing that . On most Tuesday nights we would do between 100 and 150 people just for dinner and the nice part about that was for our staff .

A lot of people have an opportunity to work on a Tuesday for a good money shift that otherwise would not have existed . It also again got us butts in seats on the actual steak meals . We weren't making money , we were breaking even . But only about 50% of the folks ordered the special . So the other 50% were ordering off our menu items that we had margin on .

So it wasn't like we were losing money . Again , people coming in the staff makes more money , but we also have all these people ordering not the special and that helped a lot . The other thing , too , is obviously all these people drink . Right , we're in a bar .

Now , I will admit , when you do a food focus special , you will get some people coming in just for the food and they'll have a water , an iced tea , a lemonade , a Coke , something non-alcoholic , and that's okay .

But most of the folks that are coming in are going to have a drink or two or three , and you're going to make a lot more money selling those drinks to them than you would if they weren't there . So the fact that your food is a break-even is not relevant , because you would never match that level of sales or profit without that food being a break-even .

When you're doing this , make sure whatever food you do plays into the type of establishment that you are . So I was a neighborhood pub in the Midwest . They're steak and potatoes people . I gave them steak and potatoes , but it could be a taco special , it could be burritos , it could be a poutine night if you're in Canada , or fish and chips .

It doesn't matter what that food special is , but it has to be something attractive and cheap that will drive people in the door and give you additional incremental revenue . That will make you more money and make your staff more money .

A lot of this and I keep saying this about making your team more money , because you are more successful when your team is more successful . And if it's not costing you money to make your servers and your bartenders more money , you should do it . It helps them , it helps their families , it makes them enjoy their job more .

So it's important to not think just about your pocket , but if you can have the money in your pocket , stay the same or grow a little bit bigger , while you can get your team members' pockets to be fatter and they get to make more money , you are always winning .

Now I'm going to tell you a story about an event that we did weekly for a few years , and we did it in relation to a TV show , and I have no clue why I ever agreed to it . I have no idea about why it worked .

I frankly don't even understand what it was , to be honest but it made me a lot of money and it had people driving from two or three states away just to come to the bar for this event , and I'm not sure that anyone can replicate this .

But I want to tell this story because it's an interesting case study into things that you can pull off if you're open to thinking outside the box . And so here was the deal .

I got introduced to a guy that was doing local podcasts and his main podcast was about beer and bars and hanging out and just kind of guy stuff . And this was 2013 , 2012 . So it's when podcasts were just starting out and starting to be popular , and he was someone I knew . He came and he said will you sponsor this podcast ?

Yeah , okay , whatever , man , I'll throw you some money . It's interesting , you have this growing audience . I don't get it . I mean , obviously I understand podcasts now , but back then I did not get it at all . But I became one of his podcast sponsors and because I was one of his podcast sponsors , every couple shows he would record it live from my bar .

Well , that podcast took off and it became quite actually a local radio celebrity , because they were not differentiating between radio and podcasts a decade ago . And then he had this idea for a different podcast and that was based upon the show the Walking Dead .

He created a podcast called Drinking Dead , and the way this podcast worked is they watched the last week's episode of the Walking Dead , which aired immediately prior to the Walking Dead , and while they watched the prior week's episode , they had a live podcast .

They talked about it , they analyzed it , they talked about all the character development and plot development while watching the show live . So if you were at home watching the show on TV , you could listen to the podcast and hear all the commentary and conversation about it as you're watching the prior week's episode .

And then they would stop the podcast and they would just have a viewing party for the current week's podcast or the current week edition of the Walking Dead .

And I have no clue why this worked , but the guy was really good at podcasting , he knew what he was doing and he actually built to become one of the larger walking dead related podcasts in the country , in the United States , and because of that we drew in these huge crowds that would sit around my bar and watch a TV show rerun from the week prior , listening

to five people talk into microphones and spend a bunch of money , and then they would all hang out and watch this week's show , which had happened to be on a Sunday , and I think the show aired at like seven or eight .

So normally after the show they'd clear up pretty quick , but we would sell them generally a bunch of drinks and pretty much everybody ate because it was right around dinner time and it was one of the most crazy events we did and it made , quite frankly , a great ROI . Now , if you told me before I had ever done that that , hey , you know what .

I know how I'm going to make your bar busy and make money on Sunday we're going to do a podcast based on a show about zombies I would have told you you were crazy , because that does not make any frickin sense . Many of my experience up to that point . But it worked . So sometimes you have to be willing to take a bet on somebody .

Take a bet on somebody's idea that seems like it may have some promise and see if there's actually something there . Because again , I don't know why it worked .

I'm not a walking dead fan , I don't even like zombie movies , I could care less but it did work and it worked really , really well and it literally brought people in my bar who would drive 100 , 200 , 250 miles just to come and drink some beer and watch people talk about a TV show that was on the air last year .

Now there's one more type of weekly event that I want to touch on and I'm sure a lot of you are wondering why I haven't hit this so far and that is live music . And the reason why I save live music to the very end is because I have personally mixed feelings on live music .

I think live music can work very well , but it has to fit into the night , the atmosphere , the noise volume that is required and one of the worst things about live music and I'm sure all of you have experienced this you go to a bar with a friend of yours , you want to sit down , have a drink and talk and they have music going on and you cannot hear shit

. You can't hear anything . It's so loud you can't even think . Well , I don't think that helps business , I really don't . I think you never have . Now you can do live music and tell the band to tone it down , but no one ever does that . People just let bands play as loud as they want and then those bands blow out everyone's eardrums .

And I will tell you right now I live in a tourist area , as I mentioned , I live in an area that has a lot of live music going on , and the list of bars that are near me that I won't go to on a Friday or Saturday night because I can't think while I sit there and have a beer , is huge .

As a matter of fact , the list of bars I will go to is down to two , because everywhere else has live music and it's so loud that if I have somebody visiting from out of town , if I want to go grab dinner , even a little bit later in the night , when some of the normal restaurants have already closed , I'm not going to go there because it's too damn loud .

So live music can be great for drawing people in . It can also be great for pushing people away . Now , obviously that can be solved just by turning the volume down a little bit . One of the rules I always had in my bar for live music is if I cannot have a conversation at the back of the room , not right up by the speakers .

Right Right up by the speakers , you're getting blown out , but you chose to sit there .

But if you're towards the back of the room , if you're away from that band a little bit and I cannot sit and talk to you maybe not in a normal conversational level , maybe I have to be a little bit louder than normal but I should be able to say something to you and you should be able to understand me .

If you go to the bar to order a drink , the bartender should be able to hear you and know what you're ordering . That's kind of a requirement in my book for most bars . Now , if you have a live music venue , obviously that's not true at all . It's not even close to true . You got a live music venue . You play it as loud as you want .

That's what you're there to do . That's why people are coming in in the first places for the live music .

But if you're not a live music venue , stay away from having bands that are too loud , because you will alienate some of your regular customers and guess what ? They're less likely to come in if they know every Saturday night you have really loud music and so they don't want to come in on Saturday night and then they go to the bar down the street .

They don't have live music and so they really like it . They start going there every Saturday night and then they say well , you know , I wonder what this place is like on a Tuesday . So then they go there on a Tuesday night . You've just lost that customer .

But if you do live music properly , if you have a separate room for live music , if you have a venue that's totally based around music , it can do absolute wonders for your establishment that's really based on your concept and what you do .

But for most of your dive bars , neighborhood bars , pubs , those sorts of establishments , if you're going to do live music , I think you need to do it quite enough that people can think and have a conversation Along those lines . One of the other issues with live music is live music is fricking expensive Right .

Karaoke is music being played by a person that talks in between songs . So in that way it's similar to live music and karaoke is half the price , a third the price of what a lot of bands want and a lot of bands . When we go back to that whole idea of , will this make me break even ? Probably not .

So you have to be very , very careful about how much money you're spending on your music , because it may or may not allow you to break even Now , because of that , what you see a lot of bars do is they charge a cover . Well , I'll tell you right now if you're a neighborhood bar , you're a dive bar .

If you're a pub type place and one of your regulars shows up and you say , hey , it's five bucks to get inside , they're going to say , fuck , you , turn around and walk away . They are not paying $5 to sit in the same bar . They sit in every day of the week . So it's hard to charge a cover unless you have that venue part in your concept .

Now , there was one bar in that I used to go into from time to time that had a full bar and then they had a separate space through a couple doors , through some sound proofing . That was a music venue and if you went in the music venue you had to pay to see the music . But if you didn't , you didn't . That works .

But putting a cover in front of your bar where you're charging everyone a set amount of money just to walk in the door in a bar that is not set up to be a venue is not smart and will serve to alienate a lot of your guests over time .

Another thing while we're talking about music and this is true karaoke too , but live music will increase the amount of money that you need to pay in music licensing .

As I'm sure you're all aware , ascat , bmi , csac all these companies are set up to collect money based upon the music that you have in your bar in order to pay music royalties to the writers and the singers and all that . I have no problem with that . They have created intellectual property . We have to pay to use that intellectual property .

Now these companies are very aggressive about getting their money and it does vary . You have to pay just to have a TV on , because there's licensed music on the TV that you're showing in a commercial establishment , so you got to pay just for that . If you have a jukebox , that's more money . If you do karaoke or DJ , that's more money .

If you do live music , it is way more money and you will pay those companies based upon the frequency of that live music that will determine your rate that you have to pay them . So if you are doing live music , not only do you need to worry about the higher fee to the band .

You also have a higher fee you're paying to the people that are licensed to that music . Now if you hire a band that only plays original songs , it doesn't matter . Those folks don't aren't getting any money because you haven't played any of their music . There are no covers involved .

But you got to be careful because , especially in the US , those companies will come to your events . They'll send in people to watch . It doesn't happen always , it doesn't even happen a lot of time , but I've definitely heard people getting caught by this .

They will send in people to watch what you call original music and that band on stage will play one cover and you'll be served with cease and desist paperwork the next week . That is how those folks operate , so it's easier just to pay them . They're aggressive , they're annoying . It seems like BS , but it's always easier to pay them .

It's kind of like paying the government because they have a bunch of actual laws backing up the charges that they're sending your way .

But that has to be figured in to your break even equation , and so if the licensing plus the music exceeds the additional incremental income that you're getting from having live music , it isn't worth it and I guarantee you there are a lot of bars out there and some of the bars around me that I don't go to anymore because I can't think , because they have live

music . I've been in there at nights when they don't have live music . I've been in there at nights when they do have live music and the number of people in their bar is not different than it otherwise would be .

They're spending all this money and they're afraid to not do it because they're afraid of what happens if they don't do it , because they've always done it .

But if you actually ran a test , if you did some weekends without it and then looked at the additional incremental revenue versus what they're paying , they're probably actually losing money by having it versus not having it . So always look at incremental revenue for whatever event you're doing in the night of the week .

And as one final note , I just mentioned this in relation to music , but this is true of everything . You have to experiment and test . Some events you're going to try and they are going to flop on their face and you're going to lose a lot of money .

And some things you're going to try , like some podcast about some TV show about zombies , and it's going to go gangbusters and you're going to make a bunch of money off of it . It all depends and you cannot predict what's going to work and what's not . Necessarily . You can have a good idea and you try it out and if you hit it , great .

If you don't , oh well , don't do that anymore , pick a different event .

So hopefully that gives you guys some clarity , some ideas on different things you can do weekly in your establishment to help , again , not alienate your regular customers , not to build a new base of regular customers , but to supplement your regular customers and to drive more dollars into your establishment , more butts in the seat , while at least maintaining the profit

that you otherwise would have , putting more money in the profits of your servers and creating a better experience for everyone . On that note , we'll kind of wrap everything up . If you guys have not checked it out , show notes go check out the book how to Make Top Shelf Profits in the Bar Business . Go to Facebook . Check out Bar Business Nation .

One thing fun that I think we're going to start doing there . I kind of asked the folks in the group and we've gotten some positive response to this about doing maybe a once a month AMA Q&A type thing and just allowing everyone to meet together on Facebook Live talk , chat , have conversations , collaborate live with each other .

Obviously , I would moderate , I'll answer some of the questions , but Lord knows , I don't know everything , and a lot of you guys have really good ideas that you can share with each other . That will really help each other . So , if you have not had a chance , go over to Facebook , look up Bar Business Nation , join the group .

There's a link for that in the show notes as well . As I mentioned . Pick up the book . If you have not had a chance and we will talk again next week have a good one .