Criticise my business plan

[somewhereinsuburbia]

It's an alcohol free bar. With all the mood, buzz, excitement of a normal bar but no alcoholic drinks are sold. Serves really nice, grown up non alcoholic cocktails, not super sweet bright pink juice. All the beers on draft are non alcoholic.
I thought with so many people not drinking, and cultures where the majority don't drink, it would probably be a success in a big city like London or Manchester. A lot of my Muslim friends have to meet in cafes which aren't the same in terms of atmosphere, and they all shut at 6.
We could also hold nights like sober speed dating, matching teetotal people with others, for either friendship or a relationship.
But someone must have tried it, it must have been thought of and trialled before, did it not work?

As other posters have said, when it comes to running a business the key question is "will it make money" and essentially what you are proposing here is a bar but with a much more limited market than a normal bar, without selling something which is highly addictive, can be sold at a higher price/ profit markgin and by it's nature gets people coming back for more.

I don't drink any more, but if I go out to meet people in a bar now I'm having one or two soft drinks, max, over the space of a couple of hours and am home for 10, not chugging wine back until 2am.

I think maybe there's two or three different ideas then

• a community led, not for profit pop up evening once a month or so for newly sober people looking to connect and rebuild their social life outside of addiction. This would likely have to be held in a community space and therefore would not give the ambience of a high end cocktail bar.
• a late night high end halal restaurant and side late night cafe, which I am not the right person to run given my lack of cultural knowledge.
• a teen hang out which is like a bar or pub but with no alcohol, but strict instructions that people must buy something and no large groups allowed in etc. I don't see this as viable unless aiming at very rich teens who seem to hang around sushi restaurants in my town. So hence they are catered for.
• the original idea but serve alcohol as well, which seems beside the point. Plus how would we carve out a USP?

I see these bars are popular in Salt Lake City where the majority of people don't drink. Maybe there will be a market in 3-5 years.

Proper mocktails are expensive as a PP said because of r and d. People will know how much the ingredients cost so will be unable to cope with your 'mark up' from that standpoint. In hospitality the most expensive outlay is staff and the government have just made that worse. After that you have utilities and they are not capped like domestic utilities are - a local cafe which closed (thanks to col) was spending £1k a month on the standing charges alone! Ingredients are no longer as cheap as they used to be. You have to sell huge numbers of drinks just to break even let alone make any kind of profit. Look at how many pubs, restaurants and cafes are going out of business at the moment and ask yourself if this really is the right time to be starting a very, very niche business.....

@SleepingisanArt thank you, I appreciate it. I have worked in catering/ retail management previously so I do understand the climate. It's a very uncertain time.

People want choice. A pub gives them options. Glass of wine? No problem! Beer? Vodka? Soft drink? No problem! Dinner? No problem! Coffee? No problem! Football match? Ta-da!

Maybe there will be a market in 3-5 years.

I honestly don't see it - because you're not catering for a market that isn't already being catered for elsewhere.

Someone who doesn't want to drink can already go to a bar, club, pub or restaurant and be catered for just fine. In fact, they can probably be catered for very well as those places are making their money from alcohol and don't need to charge a small fortune for an orange juice or a coke just to stay afloat.

As an almost tee-totaller who has lots of friends and family who drink, I'd prefer to just go to a bar or restaurant and order a coke while they order beer or wine etc. That way we're all happy. Going to a dry bar would only be catering for me (or any drivers, I guess) and we'd not hang about long.

I just don't see how there's money to be made in a late night dry bar - unless you offer something really unique and "out there" that isn't available anywhere else nearby and that will sustain you year-round.

Not just choice but variety - a bar that serves beer, lager, wine, spirits, soft drinks, coffee and food caters to everyone.

Late night cafe with board games, or some other "experience", workshops etc. People aren't standing in a bar drinking six or seven pints of beer because they're dehydrated, they're consuming the alcohol content, so you need to replace that with something, soft drinks aren't going to do it.

It's going to be hard to generate any profit out of four people sitting at one of your tables for three hours drinking a couple of soft drinks. You need to find another way to seperate them from their money while they're in there.

There was a BBC sounds programme about alcohol-free bars - I think it might have been a ‘You and Yours’ - and they spoke to some bar owners.

I remember that the owners also mentioned the challenge of the fundamentally non-addictive nature of soft drinks leading to lower sales.

I am a light drinker and also only on a Friday and Saturday night (I do a lot of driving Monday to Friday on some very busy roads). But even I notice how immediately addictive alcohol can be - if I drink daily during a holiday period, I notice that I rapidly normalise that and begin to expect it each night…

Just an idea, if you wanted to do a pop-up how about a Quaker venue? They are often quite beautiful buildings, decently priced and I think they are all alcohol free venues.

The other idea could be to run it as a social enterprise, with some funding, so perhaps then the profit side wouldn’t be quite so important?

The issue with board games or workshops is that you have to constantly switch up what you offer or people won't bother coming back.

You'd need hundreds of games on offer to keep people entertained and coming back, and for workshops you'd need to think about the health and safety element and numbers too.

It’s very rare to have whole groups of people willing to go alcohol free all night

I’d go for a one off novelty but wouldn’t become a regular

bbc radio 4 interviewed a woman last week who is making non alcoholic drinks and she was explaining why they are more expensive
and a bit if a competitive market

most Muslims I know should feel uncomfortable in a bar even without the alcohol they tend to go out for pudding as a family group

must alcoholics I know would struggle in a bar environment and prefer to swerve that atmosphere altogether

a pop up senario could work better for you , get your self a cool mobile set up and do dry parties for something like a a dry hen or dry baby shower party ?

@InvisibilityCloakActivated you don't really have much choice as a non drinker though. It's usually coke, apple juice, mass produced crap beer in a small bottle. We want craft, artisan beer on draft, cocktails with good non alcoholic spirits, nice non alcoholic wines which don't taste horrible, it's not too much to ask

If you have a shisha lounge you might get more business. (I’m not personally a fan of shisha, but a lot of my young Muslim friends use shisha lounges for socialising as do the Instagrammy types).

@pimplebum but recovering addicts still want a social life. For someone who is mid twenties, it feels like a death sentence. Not only do they lose their social life due to lack of non alcohol related activities, but often lose all of their friends due to their social circle being made up of other addicts. The cinema or Costa, or staying in, is a bit crap when you're 25.

Who is "we"? I rarely drink, and I don't want those things. I do like wine, so would occasionally go out for a glass, but usually I'd have a lime and soda or a lemonade.

How much do you think people want to pay for nonalcoholic cocktails? I've been to bars that charge £8-10 for a nonalcoholic cocktail. How many of them do you think people would be prepared to buy in one night?

I get what you're saying but you're missing out the crucial nugget, that "the pub" is based around drinking.

Don't try to recreate a pub or a bar, without alcohol, it loses a big part of its function. You will need to offer something else instead.

@biscuitsandbooks I live in a city with several thriving board game cafes, which are open late into the evening and are always packed and my own business involves running workshops, it's also thriving and has been for over a decade so it's definitely something I speak about from experience, and is possible, depending on the local demographic, which is a no brainer for setting up any business.

I don’t think this is a huge problem in cities anymore. Even Wetherspoons sells about 4 or 5 different non-alcohol beers, along with offering all of its cocktail pitchers without alcohol and the usual soft drinks and juices. Any of the pubs I go to in London will usually have a cocktail menu with at least two or three mocktail choices as well, a non-a beer on draft, a couple in bottles, and a stocked fridge of juices and sodas.

What you currently have is a business idea, not a business plan. If you genuinely think your idea has legs then you need to start scoping and make an actual plan. Cost up likely annual rent, rates, utilities, start-up costs, staffing costs, insurance, other running costs. What turnover would you need to break even? How many drinks would that mean selling in an average week, and at what price? Speak to some bar and cafe owners, is that feasible?

yeah but it doesn't have to be like that. My friend is a bar manager and was laughing at the dry January crowd coming in and being a bit pointedly 'I don't suppose you even have an alcohol free beer, do you?' He has a revolving craft af free on the taps plus a dozen high-quality bottles, plus Seedlip etc for G and T and cocktails. It's becoming more and more mainstream. But it doesn't pay the bills.

The typical driver/dry January person will match their alcohol drinking buddies pint for pint, but if they're not with people who drink alcohol they'll have one or two, he also says.

I think you should look at a non-profit social enterprise space that's a cafe by day, evolves into something more sophisticated at night. Regular events (music, stand-up, speed dating) and pop-ups by local cocktail bars (like a battle of the bars to see who can really put their money where their mouth is when it comes to alcohol free).

But you're not going to get the mark-up to create the luxe experience you're looking for. The other thing you could look at is AF pop-ups in bars that already sell alcohol, using their function spaces, but of course that may be too triggering for your consumer group. But I could see a great monthly pop-up in a city where a bar goes all out to impress the AF crowd.

It sounds like you're wanting to go down the Social Enterprise route; opening a safe place for recovering addicts, in which case you may be able to get a grant to help with the costs. It would be worth researching existing organisations in your area that are working with the clients you're looking to appeal to. They may be able to help you hone in on a gap in the market and potentially help you advertise your new venture.

But the reason most places don't offer all those things is because they don't sell.

Having a big menu full of fancy non-alcoholic drinks is a lovely idea but it would cost you an absolute fortune in start up costs. And then think about what you'd have to charge in order to cover rent, staffing, equipment, council tax, utilities, repairs, insurance, cleaning, maintenance, your own wage - and make a profit on top. The costs would be astronomical.

The reason most places only have two mocktails, some J20 and a couple of soft drinks is because they're cheap and popular.

This issue is that (only speaking about cocktails, I dislike all beer alcoholic or otherwise and have yet to have an alcoholic wine which is better than mid) that exists already. Not always focussed on alcohol free spirits and my experience has been there’s a greater level of creativity than replacing a spirit, which almost always leaves a sense of something missing. This is where the significant R&D costs come in though. While some cocktail bars focus only on alcohol, there are others who have a delightful, thoughtful and well crafted alcohol free menu. I was out with family at the weekend and we had pre dinner cocktails at a bar with a small but interesting non-alcohol selection, then on to a restaurant which had a non-alcoholic drinks pairing so I had 8 different, interesting drinks that night. And it meant that the people in the group who wanted to drink alcohol could do so. There just wasn’t a need for a separate alcohol free bar because there was no void to fill. As a group we might go to an alcohol free bar for one drink, but probably not two or three. And a lot of people would be put off paying high prices for non-alcoholic cocktails in a group setting, when they are thinking they’ll could pay almost the same price for an alcoholic drink elsewhere.

I do think if you are thinking of the Muslim market- having lived in Windsor where there are lots of well off Muslims, it wasn't just they didn't drink- they rarely seemed to go out!! I would be interested in others views on that who live in areas with lots of Muslims at all income levels- certainly I rarely saw them in cafes either- not being racist by the way - just honest as to what I observed.

@Seas164 but that's kind of my point - that market already exists, so OP would need to work really hard to make her board game cafe stand out from all the others.

You could try a pop up in an existing cafe. Find one that's only open in the day time and ask them if you can rent their space one night a week to try out your idea? That way you can see if it works without committing to the complete costs of a whole venue yourself.

You should be aware that the majority of food/drink venues fail within a year or two of opening and that's without the extra challenges of something very niche and current CoL crisis leading to increased costs and hence prices at the same time as your market has seen their disposable income reduce significantly such that they're really have to cut back and spend carefully on what you're offering. Unless you're very lucky, this sounds like a quick way to lose tens of thousands of pounds.

You’d have to do some really good food or go really hard on events probably to make it work. Hospitality is hard hence the failure rate! Sounds lovely though and I’d go but as a customer it would have to be not extortionate. As a business owner you’d probably have to be extortionate for it to work.