April 17 marks 3 months since we opened our doors to the public – here’s an update on what’s happening behind the scenes at 443:
A Rose by Any Other Name
One of our biggest issues at the moment is our impending name change, I wrote about it in detail HERE. It’s a huge decision and not one we take lightly. Unfortunately, we have discovered that the easy and obvious edits to our name are in use in other places and/or trademarked – something like The Living Room at 443 or The Listening Lounge at 443. The other massive hurdle is finding an available “.com” domain name.
It’s hard, man…and we don’t want to make another mistake.
I got another email from the Nashville lawyers, they are getting anxious for us to begin changing our name – but we haven’t been able to come up with the right one yet.
Personally, I have always thought that a good business name conveys what you do – you shouldn’t make potential customers guess what type of business you’re in. But what if the focus of the business changes?
Passion Project vs Business Model
The other dilemma we’re facing is figuring out how to make a small live music venue a viable business. It’s nearly impossible for a venue our size to break even on a free show once we’ve paid the performer and our sound tech. Don’t believe me? Do the math.
If we pay a solo or duo $250 to play a Friday night, then pay our sound tech $100 we have to sell an EXTRA $475 in drinks to cover those expenses – and that’s just to break even. That’s A LOT of drinks (about 80 at $6 each), even if the bar is full and everyone is drinking. The scenario is even scarier when the crowd is thin or a lot of people are drinking water or club soda – because then we’re definitely losing money.
We’ve experimented with charging a $5 cover for some of our events to help offset the expense. It certainly helps, but we haven’t had one yet that completely covered the payout. And is the $5 cover keeping potential guests away? Probably…at least a couple of times a week I have someone come up to me with a copy of our calendar and ask me which shows are ticketed or have a cover because they only want to attend the free ones.I don’t think we can sustain the free show model, but I recognize that charging even a $5 cover will deter some of our guests.
Our ticketed shows are the only performances that truly have the potential to be profitable. Every deal is a little different, but generally, the arrangement is a ticket split with a minimum guarantee. IF the artist sells enough tickets to cover their minimum guarantee and our sound tech AND it’s enough bodies to fill the room AND the guests are eating and drinking something besides water, we have a shot at making a profit that night. If we can’t sell enough tickets and put enough people in the room we lose our shirts, which has happened a few times already.
We just aren’t established enough where people trust us to take a chance on an artist they haven’t heard of and buy the ticket anyway. On the other hand – options for national touring artists with name recognition who still want to play 100 seat rooms are few and far between…Amos Lee is not coming here anytime soon, you know? So, we are booking acts we think are amazing, marketing the shit out of them, and hoping for the best.
At the moment, 443 is far more of a passion project than a viable business. We can’t personally fund our live music performances forever, so we may have to make the hard decision at some point to abandon the idea and just be a cool cafe and lounge. It would be a shame because we believe this room is a unique and special addition to the community, but the economics are what they are – so that is impacting our decision on the name change too.
One of the reasons we became a coffee house/cafe during the day was to help support live music at night. We knew the business model was going to be a challenge, but we didn’t want to give up on our dream of creating an intimate space for live acoustic performances. Unfortunately, the daytime component of our business has been difficult to establish.
Right before we received the cease and desist from Nashville I ordered some marketing materials to spread around our neighborhood to help cultivate the coffee and cafe side of the business. Since we’re going to have to change our name, that project has been put on hold and I’ll need to redesign everything once we settle on our new moniker.
The other complication in developing a thriving lunch business is our menu.
So. Many. Carbs.
If you’ve visited the cafe before, you know we don’t have a real kitchen, just a 3′ cold prep table and a couple of shelves. We offer a variety of baked goods that are prepared at the Syracuse CoKitchen and we have a small, rotating menu of paninis, wraps, pasta salads and soups. In the evening we add a charcuterie board, cheese plate and hummus platter. We put out a surprising amount of food given our limitations, but we are definitely bread and carb heavy.
We would love to offer a couple of salads to better accommodate vegetarians, vegans and gluten-free guests, but if we set up our prep table for salads we wouldn’t be able to offer anything else – we only have 8 compartments. The only possible option is to prep grab and go salads at our offsite kitchen, but we would need a refrigerated display case to hold them in the cafe. We own a couple of backloading cases that we bought before we opened, but they are huge and heavy and we can’t make them work with our bar configuration. So I’m on the hunt for a modestly sized and affordable unit with access from the front, and hopefully we can sell the old ones.
Outdoor Seating?
Offering outdoor seating would help our cause immensely, so I’m putting together a budget for what it would take to make that happen. There is a very nice patio with a bar behind our building, but we can’t license the area with the liquor authority because the apartments above us have access to it. Plus, the guys upstairs use it as their backyard, and we don’t want to intrude on their private space.
But – we do have an area on the left side of the building that has the potential to work. The area is already fenced in and with some elbow grease and creativity, it wouldn’t take much to make it a lovely summer oasis.
I know it looks rough right now, but if we relocate the storage pod, clean up the brush and trees and add lots of plants and pretty patio tables and umbrellas, we’ll have a fabulous outdoor area for our guests. Ultimately, I’d like to add a beautiful wooden pergola.
The one daunting piece is the liquor authority’s requirement to provide access directly to the seating area – we can’t just send people out the front door. So, we would need to cut a hole in the side of the building and install a new door. It’s more of an expense than we should take on right now, but frankly, I think we need it to even compete during the warmer months. We have such a short summer season, you can’t blame people for wanting to sit outside and enjoy it when they can.
How You Can Help
We appreciate the encouragement of everyone in the community and we are working our asses off to make 443 the very best little live music venue/coffee house/bar it can be.
If you believe in what we are doing and want to support, stop by for a cup of coffee (it’s really good!) or a cocktail. Schedule a meeting in one of our living room areas (we’re happy to reserve them), or buy tickets to a show. Sharing our stuff on social media is super awesome, but grabbing a friend and visiting us in person is even better.
See you soon!
