We opened our doors at the 443 on January 17, 2019.
We had lots of “ideas”… LOL
Back then, I kept our readers updated on the ups and downs of starting a music venue with monthly “Progress Reports” on this blog. I shared what worked, what didn’t, and all the changes that happened along the way. I don’t post updates like that much anymore, because for the most part, we’ve settled into what we’re doing and major overhauls don’t happen nearly as often.
But, I’ve spent the last couple of months ripping our business model apart and piecing it back together again. What happens in the next 4 months will dictate whether we live to celebrate our 5th anniversary next year.
So, I figured we were overdue for a deep dive into what’s happening in 443 Land.
Let me get this out of the way first – 2022 was a MINDFUCK. It was the very best of times… AND the very worst of times… and forced me to question everything.
Check on your small business owner friends… they are NOT okay.
Like a lot of my colleagues, I thought when we reopened post-COVID, things would eventually get back to normal… but we couldn’t have been more wrong.
For two years, there was nothing – we stayed home, we tried to stay safe, and we tried to keep our people safe. We were open, we were closed, and we were open with heavy restrictions. Rinse, repeat. Then, in 2022 everything exploded – every artist went on our tour because they hadn’t worked in 2 years. Every venue had live music, including places that had never had live music before COVID.
But not all music fans were ready to be out in a crowded venue yet. The pandemic altered people’s habits – maybe permanently. There was nothing, then there was too much. We struggled to sell tickets. Shows were canceled, and whole tours were canceled.
As Lefsetz commented about the future of live shows –
“Does not look so bright, you do not have to wear shades”.
We were optimistic in the spring, but our sales over the summer of 2022 were even lower than in 2019 (our first very sad summer in business). Our cost of goods skyrocketed. We should have closed our doors.
Instead, I took out a “Hail Mary” loan in the fall to keep our doors open.
Summers are always brutal, there is no way around it. On top of competing with all the festivals and outdoor events every weekend, we’re also competing with the short season of warm weather we get in CNY. People are boating, visiting their summer cottages, or just cooking out in their own backyards. Even our most die-hard supporters are busy doing other things.
I completely understand why it happens, but that doesn’t mean we can keep a venue open when we can only sell tickets 7-8 months out of the year.
I have tweaked and pivoted and tweaked again over the last 4 years. I have brainstormed and taken advice and adjusted and updated and shifted. I have tried everything I can think of to find the magic formula to make it all work.
And by “work”, I literally just mean “support itself”.
We always knew live music alone would not keep our doors open. We tried to be a coffee house in our first year of business, and when that failed we tried to jam-pack our calendar with music in a demented hope that it would somehow all work out. We tried being open as a “regular bar” when we didn’t have shows but quickly learned it didn’t make sense to jump back and forth.
We’ve created a very powerful experience at the 443, but that experience is labor-heavy. Plus, we are only open for about 3-4 hours a day a few days a week – which is really the crux of the whole problem: we aren’t using the room enough to cover all our regular expenses. Touring artists generally play one 90-minute set or 2 50-minute sets.
We cut back on the number of shows after the ugly, soul-sucking summer of 2022, and virtually eliminated local bands from our calendar – not because we wanted to, but because we simply couldn’t generate enough interest in bands that play for free all around town. It’s a difficult leap to make, going from background music at a bar that customers don’t have to pay for, to a ticketed show at our place.
Not surprisingly, this move earned us a lot of ill-will in the local musical community.
Apparently, I’m a huge asshole for refusing to open the room for 12 people so I can be sure to lose as much money as possible.
So I started filling in empty dates with private parties.
My background is in event planning, and it seemed like the perfect use for the space. We’ve always had a lot of inquiries about doing parties, but our music calendar used to be so heavy I didn’t have any dates available. I learned we could run a very successful private event with minimal staff. A sold-out music show requires 3 servers, me working as the (free) bartender, a food person, daytime food prep, a door person, the sound tech, and of course the band. I can run a large private event with myself and one bartender, plus a couple of hours of set-up and tear-down labor on either end.
It’s exactly the right way to use the room. The 443 has loads of charm and character, and because we don’t have a kitchen we allow clients to use any caterer they prefer. But, we need to ramp up our bookings… STAT. From my experience booking other venues, I know a lot of business comes from word-of-mouth referrals and repeat customers – and unfortunately, we just haven’t been doing it all that long.
On the live music side, we seem to have figured out the “getting butts into the seats” part. We have sold out our last 12 shows in a row, and 8 of our January shows are sold out or will be.
Whaaaaaat???? That’s A-MAZING!!
Ticket sales are super solid for everything I have posted for the first part of the year. But, I’ve been very cautious about booking and stopped taking big chances with new bands… which means sometimes we only have 2 shows a week. I’ve been opting to stay closed rather than risking an even bigger loss with a show that might not sell tickets. Can we maintain strong ticket sales if I start beefing up our calendar again?
We have to make some hard decisions with this business. I have never shied away from being transparent, and I’m not going to start now.
We are coming up on our four-year anniversary on January 17. That means ALL of our permits and licenses, including our liquor license, are coming due in the next 6 weeks, to the tune of several thousand dollars. Covering all of that is going to be a major challenge.
It’s not unusual for a new business not to turn a profit for the first few years, but on top of that, we were closed most of our second and third years of business due to COVID… so we’re not on a normal trajectory. Having owned several businesses, where we are right now doesn’t surprise me – but that doesn’t mean it’s viable to keep it going.
We can’t keep the room open if I can’t get it to support itself. We cannot dump more private funds into it or take on more debt. And, I have to start paying myself a more reasonable salary.
If you’re curious, I take a very small draw, $15,000-$18,000 a year – and I work a minimum of 60 hours a week.
Yeah, it’s SOOOOO GLAMOROUS running a music venue…
Our goals are not extravagant… but we’re running out of time.
As the person here in the trenches every day, I know exactly how special the place is and what it means to the people who visit – because just about every single night someone pulls me aside and tells me so. Some of my favorite comments:
“I love bringing my out-of-town guests here because you make Syracuse seem cooler than it is”.
“You have no idea what this place means to me”
“This seems like a NYC (or Europe, or California) venue!”
“This is my happy place”
“You would never believe this venue is on Burnet Ave!”
“The 443 is a hidden gem!”
Touring artists rave about our place, despite the fact that we don’t have a green room, any private space, or a real kitchen. I even got a lovely note from a booking agent we work with commenting on how rare it is for a new venue to get such great reviews from its clients. We have become a destination for singer-songwriters who have never played Syracuse before because there wasn’t anywhere for them to play.
I’ve held brainstorming sessions with my staff about where we are and have also been talking regularly with a small group of our customers who are business people – kind of an unofficial advisory board. I have an action plan I’ve organized into three levels:
Priority One: Activities with an immediate positive effect on our bottom line.
Priority Two: Activities that may increase revenue or profitability down the road, but will require more time and effort to ramp up.
Priority Three: Activities that improve the 443 and/or the guest experience, but don’t directly benefit our bottom line.
This is what Priority One looks like:
- Increase the number of Private Parties we’re booking. Private parties support live music.
- Increase VIP Patron membership. We’ve picked up lots of brand-new patrons in the last few weeks and it helps more than we can say.
- Launch Corporate Sponsorship program. This new program was suggested by one of our customers and it’s now live. You can find more information HERE.
- Launch Virtual Tip Jar. We have always had loyal customers who have given us “donations” and purchased gift cards they didn’t want as a means of supporting us. To make it easier, I’ve added a Virtual Tip Jar to our website, you can find it HERE.
And these are some Priority Two initiatives:
- Retention program for first-time visitors. I have always been frustrated at the number of people who visit for the first time, rave about how great we are, and then I never see them again. We created a new program to try and capture more of them.
- Weekends in the summer will be reserved for private parties ONLY starting in June. Live music will be minimal, likely just a day or two during the week. We learned the hard way we cannot compete with everything that goes on in the warmer months, and being able to do 2 parties a day on the weekends will be a huge boost to sales. We are hoping to book June and July weekends completely by the end of April.
- Recording shows, live streaming, develop a branded YouTube channel.
- Create our own events and parties – tastings, themed events, etc.
- Tightly monitor labor costs. We’ve always had a tough time managing 75-80 people sitting down at the same time, but our staff has really found their groove over the last few weeks.
- Social media marketing has become frustrating and expensive with ever-diminishing returns. Shift focus to our email list, EventBrite, and Bandsintown marketing.
- Slash expenses where possible, particularly in the “disposables” category. For example, we recently switched back to regular glasses and ditched the plastic cups for water for most events, which is saving us $125-$200 per month.
- Price out menu items and drinks more frequently – the cost of goods needs to be monitored. I did NOT do a good job of keeping up on this in 2022 as the cost of goods was skyrocketing.
- Launch a line of 443 merch to sell at shows and online.
- Sell off excess liquor in our storage room. We have accumulated too much mid-priced allocated bourbon and we’re working on creative ways to move it.
Priority Three projects:
- Develop new menu items and specials to keep offerings fresh for our regular guests.
- Develop more vegetarian and vegan menu options.
- Continue developing our staff’s knowledge and skill.
- Come up with a good, low-cost option for lodging for touring artists. Possibly an RV we keep on the property, an AirBnB arrangement, or working with a local hotel.
I don’t want to give up on the 443 and then spend the rest of my life wondering “what if?”. What if I tried X, Y, or Z and I could have saved it? So we are throwing EVERYTHING WE HAVE at this.
Here is what I know:
We are selling out live shows regularly, which BLOWS MY MIND. We get several hundred hits a day on this website. Our email subscriber list is growing by leaps and bounds and our “open rate” – the percentage of recipients who open our emails – is much higher than the industry average. Our social media followers grow daily. Our live music customers love what we have created and have kept our faith up through some pretty dire times (LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!!!). Our new private party customers have been thrilled. And our rock-star staff works their asses off to make the 443 the unique experience that it is – I wouldn’t have gotten this far without them.
It feels like something has shifted lately, and maybe we’ve finally reached that critical mass of people who know who we are and what we do.
I spent most of the day yesterday catching up on emails and doing computer work. In the course of the day, I got three new private event inquiries, two brand new VIP Patron memberships, and we sold DOZENS of tickets across multiple shows. My inbox was pinging pretty much constantly.
We are on the cusp of making it happen. Despite the intense pressure I know the next few months will bring, I’m weirdly optimistic that we can make it work.
We have about four months to hit some pretty big goals. If we meet them, we can cautiously continue forward. If we don’t, we have to begin the process of winding things down to close our doors by the end of the summer.
But, as Lenny Kravitz (one of my personal favs) once said, “Baby, it ain’t over ’til it’s over”
One of our regular customers recently asked me how it feels to look out into the room and see the place jam-packed and a huge smile on every single person’s face as they take in the show.
Well, that’s exactly why I do this… and why I don’t want to stop. Sharing the powerful magic of that experience with our growing community is what keeps me going. There is a lot that’s scary and wrong in the world right now. A safe place to forget for a little while, to share the pure joy of live music and excellent storytelling with your fellow humans is more important than ever.
CHEERS!
