A big show, a large pitch fee, will our mobile bus bar actually make it?
After the wet weekend as our first show I managed to convince the owners of a certain London Golf Show to have my bus as part of their show and be able to serve their customers as they came through the door. 15000 tickets were reportedly already sold and it was being held in the arena called Glow which is part of Bluewater shopping center.
Big break……
At the time I was convinced that I had scored the big time. Then I was hit with the pitch fee. £2000 plus the VAT. I was now in a situation where I had to guess if it was going to be worth it. Without any previous experience this was impossible. So what did I do!? I JUST WENT FOR IT!! Call me brave or stupid I had to find out one way or another.
The costs soon started mounting..
- Plastic glasses £300
- Stock £2000
- Staff £420
- Fuel £180
- Pitch fee £2400
I was beginning to realize why event stalls and bars are always so ludicrously expensive. It’s not just them being greedy, you have to cover the cost. Also, all the risk here is being taken by the vendor because everybody ells has been paid! Scary times. Luckily my stock was sale or return.
The show is about to open it’s doors! Are they going to buy a drink?
The weeks leading up the show vanished in a flash an before I knew it I was looking at the doors as the swung open and the crowds rolled in. A couple of things really bothered me as we started. The arena is on two levels. Upstairs ALSO had an outlet that served drinks which is something the organizers had “forgotten” to mention. This instantly put us into a damage limitation situation.
To maximize our take I created a discount voucher to hand out to people that cut the price to lower than the bar upstairs and approached every stall holder and told them to get a staff discount at the end of every 3 days of the show. Credit to myself and my team we sold a load of drink but was it going to be anywhere near enough to cover the by now OUTRAGES cost of actually being there?
In the end we took just under £6000. What the general public tends to forget is that, it’s not one day out to sell some stock. It’s a large operation that takes at least 5 days to set up and take down! Never mind all the planning that’s involved.
I worked around the clock for about 6 days and earned £500….
So here I was thinking, “that bloody golf show ripped me off” As fate would have it the London Golf Show as a company went bust the following year. It turns out they got charged a pitch fee as well by Bluewater and I can tell you, it was a lot higher than the £2000+VAT I got charged for my little corner.
What did I learn?
- Running a bar is NOT like printing money even though 95% of the population seems to think so!
- I should’ve negotiated the pitch fee!
- Always buy sale or return stock (Saving grace)
- Research an event properly before attending
- Just because you’re in an upmarket venue doesn’t mean you’ll make money
In the next following months I did not have any bookings and I had totally lost faith in my Routemaster mobile bus bar project. This was the low point of my journey so far. My bills had to be paid somehow!
