We’ve been talking about making a significant change to our business model for a while now, and we’ve finally decided the time has come: Effective immediately, we will no longer be open during the day at The 443.
It was not a decision we made lightly.
Our main focus has always been live original music, but we thought our groovy room would be a great place for people to meet for coffee, work on their laptop or schedule meetings. Because we aren’t a restaurant, you don’t have to worry about a server trying to turn your table, plus our funky living rooms are super comfortable. And it didn’t make sense to us to have the space sitting empty all day.
When we opened in January, we had a full-time bartender/barista on weekdays, which allowed me to stay on top of running the business. It was always quiet during the day, but we recognized that it takes time to build a following. Unfortunately, once the summer slump hit, we couldn’t afford to keep her on anymore and despite a higher hourly wage than our evening staff, she wasn’t making enough to make it work financially.
So, I became the daytime bartender/barista – in addition to everything else I’m responsible for.
While there is value in me as an owner being there all day connecting with our guests, it also meant that I was working 15+ hour days, 6 days a week. Long hours are part of the deal when you launch a business, but being the only one there to take care of our guests meant all the behind the scenes work fell by the wayside. Aside from that, 90 hour weeks on my feet on a terrazzo floor with dozens of trips up and down the basement steps every day has taken its toll on me physically.
Monday is the only day we’re closed, so I typically spend 10-12 hours glued to my laptop trying to catch up on booking, marketing and email correspondence.
And every week, I could feel myself slipping farther and farther behind. The balls I juggle to keep everything going are starting to drop.
The idea was to develop the day business and eventually hire someone to take over behind the bar, but we just haven’t been able to make it happen. While we do have a few loyal regulars during the day, our sales reports were not encouraging – there was no growth at all during that part of the day, even as our evening business was growing by leaps and bounds.
Because of the increase in business at night, I desperately need to put some systems in place to manage the increased volume. We have added to our staff, which comes with its own set of challenges, and we are trying to run a business in a space that isn’t all that conducive to what we’re doing. Managing inventory is a whole new ballgame.
So I’m getting off the hamster wheel of just surviving the day-to-day and getting back to big-picture planning. I’ve got new menu items that have been stalled in development for months, marketing and collaboration ideas I need to implement, a calendar to fill, and weeks of emails to catch up on.
We have slowly come to realize that our location is not ideal for people just coming in to hang out – during the day OR at night. We are a destination venue and it’s very event-driven. Knowing that, it only makes sense to focus more attention on booking fantastic music and creating memorable special events.
We’ll be opening at 4pm Tuesday through Saturday and we’ll be open on Sundays for special events only. It was a hard decision to make, but we’re confident it’s the right choice – and we couldn’t be more excited about what the future holds…stay tuned for lots of cool new stuff at The 443.
See you soon!
