Topic: 3000-6000 BTC loan - Hookah Lounge - 9/18/12 Update - page 28. (Read 55332 times)

I don't time myself.  I'm getting furniture done now.

How much work have you done on properly researching your start-up costs this week?

Adding beach theme to hookah bar.  Will setup subs to make rumbling wave sounds.  Wall will be the ocean.

Just so you won't feel you wasted your effort- I see what you did there!

And sometimes good people fall into shit and come up smelling like roses... a very good friend of mine, a co-worker until yesterday, came into a meeting on Tuesday with a chip on his shoulder. One Napoleon-Complex challenged boss and a couple of ill-conceived words later he is on his way out the door for a permanent vacation. Driving home he gets a call from a realtor he knows who has just found a fully equipped, brand spanking new restaurant in a lovely historical rehab building on the best corner in his town, and would he be willing to take over operation and re-open a cafe if he gets the $ 350,000 worth of equipment and furnishings for free, just by paying the first month's rent?

His lifelong dream has been to open his own restaurant, he said yes, and this coming Friday I will be enjoying dinner at his grand opening. Sometimes amazing things just happen to worthy people.

Eh, it wasn't angry or personal to me.

Dank just acted like sooo many new recruits who think they're out to change the world and need some common sense hammered into their thick little skulls.

I went a little instructor on him, but that's about it.

The sad thing is is that Dank is more hard headed than most young dumb and full of cum 'cruits are.

I figured out after awhile he's not interested in the real world, or how real world things are done, he wants it done as easily and cheaply as possible, with as little effort from him as possible, and is still convinced that the power of magical thinking will overcome everyone.

He doesn't realize that Jimi Hendrix is famous because he was outside human average, that he had a rare talent combined with a tough young life, that all combined into the Jimi Hendrix we all know. He looks at people that are famous in their fields and sees the fame and end result, not the years of sweat, blood, and tears, and thinks that because they did it, he can do it too. With his "we can become anything and do anything" attitude he's setting himself up for failure.

Yes, being positive is all well and good, but knowing your limitations is the first step in achieving greatness. Knowing your weaknesses and striving to overcome them or adapt to them is another huge step.

But, that's not positive.



Dank will undoubtedly discover he's got to work his ass off on this, and will get scooped by a competitor, found out the hard way that it won't work, or wake up and apply himself and manage to achieve his objectives.

And Dank...

In the time you've been waiting for the realtor to call you back? Someone serious could have put together an entire business plan, researched relevant laws, scouted over 10 locations, and begun contacting suppliers about lines of credit, as well as applied for all the relevant licenses.

could it be "the walrus" ?? 

i think the peanut shells are disgusting and make the place seem dirty. But, I probably just have unique taste because it's the most popular bar/club in town.  There is always a huge line to get in. Luckily I know the bouncers so I can pass all the people that are waiting in line like i'm some sort of celebrity. That's the only reason I would ever go there.  Bitches love passing people in line.

I would imagine the price very much depends on how thoroughly the pipes are cleaned.

I've got a hooker bar close to my home and sneak out once a week or so for a smoke while the wife's at work, last time I got my nob smoked it was a hell of a lot more than what you've costed do you really think students have got this sort of money?

I live in a town with 230k residents, one college, a couple of trade schools. I'm right next to a 1,3m resident city. I have a hookah place near by, two if you count the Lebanese restaurant that advertises it as available, though I never saw any in use.

I did hang out enough at the hookah place to get a decent idea of traffic and demography, college students are the cliché crowd but there seemed to be a healthy amount of young people, all situations of life mixed. A decent bloc of older gentlemen of various Arabic descent was there regularly too. A town with a decent amount of young people should hold the required client base, baring local and cultural issues. Might not seem relevant, but in a town with a strong anti-Arabic/Islamic sentiment or whatever ass backwards prejudice the flavour of the month is, a decent plan might fail spectacularly for no good reason. This is more of a risk analysis thing though, I'm getting ahead of myself.

I will say though that like a lot of other entertainment venues, you could hear crickets during the first half of the week, and even after that the real traffic was seen after 5PM. I used to pretty much squat the place non-stop to study during the after-noon, my record being something like 35 days straight, but I stopped when I realised they essentially stayed open just for me. Felt appreciated but kinda bad lol.

I did end up helping them get enough traffic to warrant opening up again in that time slot, but that came with a new set of requirements like an enterprise level internet access, a solid networking backbone and a projector. The service was initially offered per hour, but rapidly made more sense as a loss-leader for beer sales, with a 4 hour voucher offered with purchase. You might not want to go that route, but bundling it with something with a high margin like pistachios or fresh fruit smoothies might fit well.

Taking on a more diversified mission like operating as a non-smoking café or restaurant during the day might make more sense, even if you previously said you wanted to stick to packaged food. Non-smoking would allow you to fetch a more broad customer base, cracking the business crowd at lunch would bring in decent revenue. As much as I appreciate the smoke, no way I'm bringing that back on me back to the office. If you have outside space you could offer that there during the day.

You might not want to take that on, but you might want to partner up with someone more interested in the food side of the business. That would allow you to divest some of the hookah-centric responsibilities to them as well, but that comes with other responsibilities as well.

tl;dr smaller towns are a possibility.

Word of advice, the best constructive criticism comes from the people screaming it at you, albeit sometimes in a deferred fashion. This is true if it's coming from your boss, your class mates, your clients, hell, even from the mugger robbing you at gun point.

There is always a reason why people go after you, though their reaction might not be reasonable or measured. Find the trigger, take an honest look at it and see how you can learn from it (and ideally avoid repeating the same argument cycle).

I don't really have a dog in this fight, being new and all, so I guess I can say with a certain neutrality that you escalated the argument first. Now, you can see this last phrase as a personal attack and dismiss me as a troll. Fine, less work for me this week-end.

What I hope you'll do though is take the time to read the whole thread again, look at the various interaction between you and Ant (and others), identify the breakdowns in comms and think about how you could've mitigated the conflict or even turned a situation about to go sideways into something more positive.

In my professional opinion, the original path Ant took was the correct one by challenging you. Personally I would have distanced myself somewhere around page 5, but the fact that he kept trying to hammer in some actually really pertinent info cost, risk and management wise is still a credit to his person, though he might have taken the whole thing too personally.

Read the thread from page 1, assess truthfully and impartially, then decide how you want to proceed. This will show me (and others) you're willing to be serious about this.

Ego has no place in business, at least in public.

Which US city has five universities in close proximity to one another?  The cities that come to mind are huge (NYC, Philly, Boston) and surely have a few hookah bars.  Is it actually one major university, then some professional schools, and commuter and community colleges in your town? 

Good advice.

I really hope dank takes you up on this offer.  I'm very interested in seeing how many "hidden" costs there are.

Ant seemed to be the one with the attitude, to me.  No matter how good your advice is, if you're insulting the person you're giving it to every other sentence, you can't expect them to be receptive, let alone grateful.  I'm open to advice and appreciate, very much, the useful knowledge I have gained from a few different people.

I'm not in CA, yet.

God I hope he's not in California.  They have lots of laws related to indoor smoking which have to be complied with in order for a hookah lounge to operate legally, including labour laws.

I'm almost tempted to write up a complete cost analysis, but after seeing what Ant caught attitude wise, I'm hesitant.

Dank, if you promise to cut the attitude, provide a minimum of info (IIRC you're in Cali, right?) and apologize to the people you gave sass to, I'll consider it.

<-- third year accounting student

Alcohol is indeed one of the most dangerous and deadly drugs, you are wise not to put faith in it.  You should learn however that all recreational drugs carry deadly risks as well and as with alcohol they can not simply be wished away.

Thank you everyone for contributing your thoughts.  I don't plan on selling alcohol because I'm not 21 and I really don't care to distribute alcohol, alcohol is not a drug I put faith into.  I don't plan on serving anything but packaged food, I'd rather not have to deal with inspections.  I will let my guests bring in their own food, though.  I think I'll pass on the peanut idea, rather aim for a clean establishment.

And repentance, I don't grow any tomatoes, sorry.

The idea's not a bad one, but many states have incredibly strict regulations about the type of food and beverages which can be served in an indoor smoking venue, especially with regard to any food or beverages prepared on the premises.  One of the hookah lounge owners who posts on one of the hookah forums was saying that he can only legally prepare coffee by certain methods and any food he serves has to be pre-prepared elsewhere.  This is why dank needs to find out all of the regulations which will affect the operation of his business - mixing drinks on the premises might not even be an option where he lives.

And while nuts on the floor might be a cute gimmick, it's one more thing which has to be cleaned up at the end of the night - either dank will have to pay someone to do it or he'll have to stay back and do it himself (assuming his local health regulations would even allow it in the first place).

There's actually a couple of ME-themed hookah franchises in the US, but dank's budget doesn't really allow for high end chess and backgammon sets and going too "forty thieves" may well discourage the college crowd who might prefer more of a sports bar type theme with live bands, pool tables, air hockey tables, and a couple of televisions mounted on the wall so they can watch the game while they're chilling.  Creating any sense of intimacy in a 6000 sqft space  would be extremely difficult on a limited budget.  He might be better off going for a more spartan, warehouse type theme.