Written by Chall Gray
An Asheville bar owner—with experience in opening several other bars in the past—pulls back the veil. Spoiler alert: It ain’t all wine and roses. But the good parts can be very good.
It starts with an idea.
At some point you’re captured by something. Something perfect in the atmosphere of a room in a certain bar in a certain city, somewhere. And that feeling, the one that captured you, sticks. The next part is critical: What do you decide to do with that feeling?
For many people that feeling becomes a treasured memory. Maybe they return to that bar, or maybe they find a bar in their town that also evokes that feeling, and it becomes their regular place. Others, though, are struck with the idea of opening their own bar. Romantic notions, perhaps. Although in order to be effective, romantic notions must be rooted to some truth, do they not?
Let’s consider for a moment that you fall into that latter camp. You like the idea of coming into your bar, greeting the regulars by name. Testing out that new bourbon in an Old Fashioned is a type of quality control you wouldn’t dread.
In our consideration, let’s say you become a little more serious about opening a bar. The next step is to figure out the concept. Put as succinctly as possible, the concept is the central idea of the business. There are countless types of bars out there, whether you want to have a beer bar with all the rarest rauchbiers, or maybe a cocktail lounge with a comprehensive collection of single malts. Perhaps it’s a neighborhood wine bar, a sports pub, or any number of other ideas.
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