How & when to open a new 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:

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It's straight-up good reading from a thoughtful bunch.

Here's how Karl, the man in charge over there, describes the newsletter:

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Why?

Because TV Menus:

• Automatically update in seconds
• Always look professional
• Are easy for guests to read
• Help guests order faster
• Aren't as expensive or difficult to setup as you might think (more on that below)

Put simply, TV Menus can save you/your team time and make it easy for customers to order.

Of course, they aren't right for everyone—if you've got a quaint, cozy Belgian beer bar you don't want to jam a TV Menu above the bar.

But if you already have a few TVs, it might be worth trying, just to see if they resonate with your customers. In the right situation TV Menus can lead to a meaningful increase in beer sales.

How can I do it?

You could do this manually. How you'd implement it depends on what works for your team, but it could look like this:

• Get a smart TV (i.e. one w/ an internet browser).
• Design a slideshow on Google Slides to serve as your menu. Make sure you tune the settings to rotate screens correctly, etc.
• Use your smart TV's browser to access the Google Slides file.
• Make sure all members of the team know how to edit the file.
• Anytime your beer selection changes, visit the file to delete the beer that's gone and add new beers.

It certainly takes some time and training, but doing it manually like this could be worth it if that's your only option.

• State lawmakers in WI ran a sort of trick play to pass significant changes to the state's alcohol industry. It seems like most lawmakers agree with most of the changes, but are upset with the bait-and-switch tactics. Interestingly, the only folks who seem likely to be harmed by the changes are operators of wedding barns. They've called the changes an "extermination bill."
• Spirits sales dipped 3.5% in the year through September. The culprit remains inflation. The latest inflation numbers showed continued improvement, but, of course, that doesn't mean that $40 bottle of tequila is going back to the $30 it was a few years ago—it's just not gonna be $45 in 6 months. Rough stuff.
• And finally, there's an interesting experiment going on in Pittsburgh, where three different breweries are set to open up under one roof. They'll have separate taprooms and brewing setups, but will all call 5007 Lytle Street home. Cool idea, hope it works.