My idea is to open a bar which blends trendy bar/ club, strip club and sports bar. There is currently no place in London which really offers this. There is one place called Bar Oops which sort of addresses this and is the best and most successful strip bar in London I have been to. However in my opinion it is still to “strip cluby” and I can do it better.

Bars make money through getting people through the door, some charge an entrance fee and they make money off selling drinks. They run off volumes. Strip clubs make money off charging an entrance fee and they charge a lot for drinks. Most strip clubs are relatively quiet even on a Friday evening. Strip clubs make money off small sales of entrance fees and expensive drinks.

Girls in strip clubs make their money off private dances. They are on minimum wage usually drag in about £200- £300 per week all together. In my bar I would ban any girl asking for private dances or talking about it. I would compensate this in pay. I would probably pay each girl one private dance on top of their wage (I think girls prob get on average one private dance a night…would need to look into this). If a guy wants a private dance he has to ask the girl and it is her discretion to do it and she can charge whatever price she wants. Private dances will take place in a VIP room away from the main bar and will be properly policed to protect the girl. I have spoke to a lot of strippers and they don’t like give private dances and guys hate being hassled for dances. My wage strategy would insure I get the creme dela crème in girls.

I would like he girls to be dressed provocatively but not in bra and underwear or thong. I would want them to wear clothes as if they were on a night out. My criteria for girls would be hot, super chatty and friendly. If any girl was unreasonably rude to a customer she’s gone. Also customer would be on a one chance warning before being asked to leave.

During the day the bar would be set up for sports viewing. The bar would serve pints of beer (no strip club serves pints of beer and it’s really annoying). My pricing would be in line with other bars in the area, not strip club prices. I want my bar to run off volume. Come the evening the bar would turn into a small club. It would have a small dance floor, podiums for dancers (I would probably have the dancers doing club style dancing not pole, stripping). I would get dj’s in to play good music and I would have a seating area and smoking area outside. I would probably have my hottest girl/s on the street outside the bar maybe not even pushing sales, just standing there being chatty.

I think this bar would kill the day time trade. Why would you not want to watch sport in bar with a good set up for viewing and full of hot girls who want to chat with you?

I also think this bar would kill the evening market too. Why would you not want to go to a pumping bar/ club filled with hot girls who want to chat and dance with you.

My opening ours would be something like 12:00 mid day and close at 5:00 in the morning.

I would open this bar in a business district and snap up all the city workers. I would try and make the bar as girl friendly as possible, as in outside girls would be able to come in and not feel awkward or intimidated.
My bouncers would be super polite to the punter and would ultimately be there to protect the girls.

I basically am the consumer and this is what I want. I am guessing I would need around £200,000 to £300,000 maybe more… to get this thing going?? I think pick the right location and the right girls it will be instantly profitable and popular.

Thoughts?

Because you are in the UK there might be differences based on location but right off the bat I think your estimate on start up costs are low. Based on what you are describing I would double them.

Again I have no experience with UK strip clubs but this is certainly not true anywhere else. Between DJ fee and champaign room fee a non-scheduled stripper is in for between 3 and 8 dances worth of costs. If she only averaged one private dance a night she would be losing money. I'd put the average at 10 for the less attractive girls and much higher for attractive girls or girls with an established stable of regulars.

This is a bad idea. You want fixed pricing.

This is basically the concept behind Hooters. Do you have Hooters in the UK and how does it do? The all the Hooters where I live failed within a few years of opening.

I would have almost zero interest in going to a club like this. You'd be targeting a very specific demographic lonely losers. While that is a growing demographic I have no idea if it is a profitable one. Even though the girls are banned from asking for dances-- lol good luck enforcing that-- they are still there to extract money from your patrons. These guys tend to not understand the situation when they are in a strip club proper and your venue is designed to look less like that further increasing the likelihood that your patrons get burned and disillusioned to the point where they refuse to ever return. Between that and patrons being milked dry you have to expect that you'll need to replace a decent percentage of your patrons continuously. London is huge so if this is going to be possible anywhere that might be the place but I don't like this model.

While I do know plenty of girls who are perfectly comfortable going to traditional strip clubs I don't think those girls would be comfortable going to a venue like you describe. In a traditional strip club strippers are wearing stripper clothing so female patrons will not be confused. In your situation that is not the case.

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Overall reading your plan you sound like a 21 year old trying to design the ultimate playground rather than a business -- this is actually not uncommon. You've increased the costs substantially to make this venue a club utopia but the reason other venues don't already do these things is because the added costs don't generate the return to justify having them. The idea of compensating the girls enough to make it worth working in an environment where they are prohibited from hustling is insane. The idea of having a strip club / sports bar / nightclub hybrid is not bad but you need to drop all the BS that makes sense only from a patron perspective.

this business would be about $ spent per punter given volume would be capped on the liquor license.

this doesn't sound like a recipe for high spend per punter. you could prob add another zero to the cost prediction too (at the very least imo).

Op you should just ship Henry like 5k for saving you 300k

It sort of sounds like you want to start a ice cream shop that also serves steaks and pizza and somehow it all magically works together because everyone loves ice cream, steak, and pizza individually.

Now OP this, this is an idea

Your idea is not practical at all. It sounds like a random fantasy that doesn't have the details thought out. I agree with all of the responses so far and I'm sure even more flaws can be found.

Don't get bummed. Think about another idea. Not all of them will be winners.

Fwiw I'm a londoner and a long time drinker and there is definitely big opportunities.

I think OP is going a bit extreme, but as a couple of suggestions:

- when I was in holiday in Bermuda we went to a beer pong night. It attracted hot american girls and there are tons of american girls in London who would love this, which in turn attracts all the guys.

- Another idea is trying to set up a chain of bars that are open till late, like 3am, but don't play loud music. Trying to find somewhere like this in London is never easy. Also if you knew you'd always get served within 1 minute this would be a huge plus. I am always amazed how some bars are so slow, whilst I do prefer pints if they sold reasonably priced bottled beer they could speed up the service so much. Also nothing worse than being stuck behind someone who orders 4 different cocktails

edit: regular drinkers in London around my age (late 20s) would be up for some different nights out, esp helpful for birthdays etc, for example one night a week could be beer pong, one night a week could be olympics night where you do challenges etc, idk, just a thought

I owned a small percentage of a strip club in NY, and managed the same strip club for years before I bought into it. I can't really comment on the amount of capital needed in the UK, because obviously laws are dif. there, but in the US, 300k is a very reasonable down payment to purchase a strip club. Starting your own is a much riskier proposition. Getting the proper permits can take years. In the end, you may not even get them. I always felt purchasing a club with all permits in place is a much better idea, unless you have millions where if you take a loss it won't matter.

Henry17 is correct as well... you have DRASTICALLY underestimated how many dances are sold. Also, paying the girls increased wages isn't good for anybody, as it means more taxable income for the girls.

Girls are used to making money one way. They have stripped for a living for a while. Switching the way they do business won't work. The idea won't work. Strip clubs can be very profitable, but not this one.

Here in DC, there are no more strip club licenses being auctioned off. Zero. If you want to start a strip club, you need to buy an existing license form someone and that little piece of paper will cost you about $1.5 million.

As for beer pong, there was a place that did this in this area. Guess what... when it comes to anything related to alcohol, it's highly regulated and the authorities said they can't do it and they got shot down.

Now, I'm no expert on London, but from my visits the place is damn expensive even compared to NYC so I doubt that starting any business will be cheap or easy - particularly in a highly regulated industry dealing with highly regulated products.