How & when to open a new bar/restaurant location

Ben Wiley is an owner of some of the best bars in Brooklyn, NY, like Bar Great Harry and Glorietta Baldy among others.

But it's not like he just started out with multiple bars at the beginning of his career (in fact, he was trained in the culinary world). He started with one bar and grew his empire from there.

In the multiple openings he's done since then, he's developed a tactical playbook for when and how to open a new place. Here are the takeaways:

• Opening a new location takes a lot of time and effort, so you need to be on the ball at your existing business(es). If you're spending all your time on them, then you won't have the bandwidth for expanding.
• Places like McDonald's can just ask their computer to pinpoint exactly where to go, but smaller operations need to use a combination of art and science.
• For the "science" of it, look at demographic trends. First, ID what kind of demographics you're looking for. For Ben and the kinds of businesses he runs, he's looking at where new money is going: where are the 24-year-old versions of him spending their time?
• Once you know that, look at data from the last 2-5 years to figure out where your target demographic is spending their time. Trends from the last few years are likely to continue in the same direction, so you can see where the neighborhoods or towns you're considering are headed.
• That exercise will get you to the general location. But that's only the beginning. You then need to find the right space. And that's where the art (and luck and patience) comes in.
• Next, spend time in the neighborhood you're eyeing. Visit the bars and restaurants to get a feel for what's already there. Talk to the people there. And of course, start visiting available spaces.
• Once you've gathered all the info you can, it's time for an inclusive cost-benefit exercise where you look for the best total package: the space itself, what's been done to it already, can you work with the landlord, what are the neighbors like, is it close to transit, etc.
• If, after all that, a winner emerges, then great! Get rolling! But—and this is important—don't force it. It's totally worth it to spend more time looking for a good, doable fit rather trying to make a place work that never should. Ben spent 9 months looking for the right space for the latest bar he opened.

Check out all the interview clips to hear more from Ben about opening new locations, including the importance of rent ratios and specific examples of how he opened his last bar, Temkin's:

10 years ago if Zombie Dust showed up somewhere I'd call my friends and we'd get there ASAP because it was so hard to find. Now I can get it at the grocery store anytime.

But while the buzz around Zombie Dust has somewhat faded, Three Floyds has made a splash over the last couple weeks with their end-of-February release of the brand new Zombie Ice. As evidenced by the search data on BeerMenus.com, where Zombie Ice is trending, customers are very eager for the 8.5% Double Pale Ale.

Here's the description from the brewery:

Crafted with an unholy amount of citra hops, this Undead Pale Ale heralds the zombie evolution after the dust has settled from the apocalypse.

So it follows in the esteemed tradition of Zombie Dust. Pretty darn good credentials.

• Efforts at liquor license reform continue in NJ, though the governor admits getting any significant changes through will be difficult in an election year.
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• And since everything we as a country seem to care about in the last 2 weeks is AI-related, we feel obliged to share with you that Night Shift Brewing in Everett, MA brewed a beer from a recipe provided by Chat GPT. The beer is called...you guessed it: A-I-P-A.