What would you most like to see new in an HH bar?

[Randy Cornhole]

I visited Butterfly rock 5 days ago and found it very cold in atmosphere - Lighting too bright, music too hip hop, TV American wrestling and just a bit (hard to say) not comfortable, a bit clinical.
Dare say it will have an audience but not for me. OK.

[MartinJ]

FREE BEER

[HansMartin]

What and where is "Butterfly Rock"?

[matthew80]

When I was in Hua Hin last year, I spend a lot of time in most of the bars, and I have to say that I liked the "rustic bare-bones" atmosphere to be found in nearly all of them. Part of the charm, I reckon. I can appreciate that the return on the investment to make major upgrades would be a long-time coming, but it seems to me that two improvements could be made swiftly and relatively cheaply: clean washrooms and a better selection of music. Anything else is is unimportant to me. Keep the beer and food cheap, and the clientel happy, interesting and funloving! - as I found them to be! Cheers!

[Wanderlust]

What and where is "Butterfly Rock"?

It is a bar in Soi Sarawat (also known as Soi Hotpot) which is, when going south along Phetkasem Road, on the right hand side past the traffic lights by Satukarn Square and easy to spot because of the Hotpot restaurant next to it - Butterfly Rock is on the left within this soi about 70 metres or so up.

[MartinJ]

Wanderlust that explainsa lot.

Last time i was in Hua Hin my lady friend took me to Hot Pot because MK was too far and she wanted to cook for me?

thought it was strange, going to a Restaurant and she does the cooking ? but enjoyed it lots it was great idea of hers,

But when i wanted to look around the area, she got me into a tuk-tuk so fast my feet never touched the ground.

The place is either so good or no place for a nice boy like me.

[Guess]

Bar owners reading this might care to take note about the recurrant comments on toilets.

Just because the bar next door has an even filthier loo doesn't excuse yours...

I totally agree that there is a lot of scope for improvement

Tom

Well, some bar owners have listened and acted upon the ned for clean toliets. One problem you have though is that if a Thai is any where near the purse strings you will never convince them that investment in toilets (100,000 baht can buy a hell of a lot here in Thailand) will ever pay returns. They have been dumping in holes for nn years so why should the farang think he needs something different.

Anyway check out more bars. There are some very nice toliets that put London and New York pubs to shame.

There has a glaring contradiction that becomes obvious if you read the topic in its entirety. JW has summed up the ROI issue whereas another poster has expressed not being ripped off with high prices. Most poster have asked for more facilities and greater investment.

The fact of the matter is that the two are mutually exclusive. If you want more then you have to pay. The only way you can pay is through the increase in drink prices.

To get all these goodies someone has to invest. Unless there is some idiot around, who has more money than sense who has no idea what ROI means let alone being able to formulate a business plan, who has a pot of money to chuck down a hole the none of these wishes will come true.

The bonus side for customers is that there have been idiots who have lost vast some of money in bar investments. There has also been a few benevolent chaps who have donated large sums to their wives who have used the money to make a good bar.

I know many bars in Hua Hin who can not put forward a business justification for having UBC. Just do the math. It takes 13,00 baht to install plus H/W investment (TVs) plus 1568 baht per month for the standard pacckage. Over a two year period that would mean 2,500 baht per month. That means an extra 5,000 baht per month in extra income to break even. For some of these little single unit bars with ten seats half occupied by bar girls it is not possible to increase revenue by so much.

For these reasons it shows why so many bars take the low investment route of putting girls in the bar. They cost little and bring in revenue. It is a sad fact of life but a truth.

I take my hat off to people to have bars and avoided the cheap option of making business.

In a nutshell I could provide all the things people have asked for but you would be paying Hilton/Hard Rock Cafe prices.

[Burger]

To be fair the thing's that people are complaining about most here, dirty toilets, lack of decent music, the odd lick of paint and UBC should be a pre-requisite of most bars IMO. So regarding 'ROI', they are already getting the 'returns' but have bypassed the 'investment' step. I know plenty of small Thai bars that have UBC, they only charge 50 Baht a Heineken and don't enjoy the traffic of farangs that Soi Bintabaht bars do.
The above items do not basically cost the bar owners anything anyway:
Cleaners are already employed, music CD's and paint are peanuts in Thailand and UBC pays for itself near enough with an extra 4 punters watching a sports event once a week.

Some of the bars that fall below basic standards have farang husbands/boyfriends fronting them up, so no excuses for them.
Agree about 'ROI' when you're talking about air-con, fancy decor, plasma screens etc.

By the way, this isn't a dig at you or JW, as far as I'm concerned yours are decent places.

Burger

[uncle tom]

Obviously the facilities in bars and the price of a beer go hand in hand.

No-one should underestimate the startup and running costs of a sports bar, and if a bar has proper air-con, that too comes at significant cost.

But some things cost very little, and I would find a little more variety welcome.

Tom

[Wanderlust]

Another issue connected to all the good points that Guess has made is the lease that many bars are on - it may not be worth their while to make such investments if their landlord might pull the plug or ask for a ridiculous rent the next time it is due for renewal. This isn't just a guess either - this is what happened to both Sawan bar and Road Hole. However some tarting up and cleaning isn't too much to ask from most of them, but air-con, plasma screens and even UBC won't be worth the while of the hole in the wall joints. In fact some of them don't even have toilets!

[HansMartin]

Pub Grub

After a serious night out, it would be nice to find something to "sop up the slop". Some grease, salt, & bread!! Hamburgers, fries, fish&chips,etc, We all have our old cures (bar-B-Q squid works for me).

But if the bathroom isn't clean, I ain't eating!!

The ROI wuld be high if someone would figure this minor detail out

[tuktukmike]

The issue of rents and leases really is not an issue as to the investment made into a bar.

As the new owner of a bar this should have been considered long before anyone signs on the dotted line. if anyone is stupid enough to pay a fortune for a short lease then thats their problem.

There does seem to be a trend towards providing cleaner toilets at the moment, just look at Crawfords and the new Headrock Bar.

And the price of beer in these bars are very competitive when compaired with others. if you invest in the right location and provide clean facillities then i am sure you can earn a reasonable living.

Remember a small bottle of Chang costs around 17bht from their suppliers but sells for around 65bht in a bar, this sounds like a good mark up to me.

Mike.

[Wanderlust]

The issue of rents and leases really is not an issue as to the investment made into a bar.

It is an issue for existing bars though, and a lot of the comments on this thread relate to improvements that could be made to existing bars - maybe the toilets etc were fine when the lease started but have deteriorated over time or have been damaged by malfunctioning equipment, customers, staff or weather; if a bar only has one or two years left on it's lease it will more than likely 'make do' until it knows what the new rent/length of lease is going to be. Of course any brand new venture should be able to make appropriate investments as they should have factored in what is needed, and as you say. shouldn't saddle themselves with a short lease for extortionate money, but many of the bars change hands without the lease being changed so in these instances the investment isn't worth it.

[lomuamart]

Good comments Wanderlust,
I've been following this thread closely, so will now add my tuppence worth as an ex-bar owner here.
I came over 8 years ago on a three year lease. They were the norm then in HH and it was only slightly later that the idea of getting options afterwards sprang to everyones' mind - particularly to the owners' as the town developed.
After 1.5 years of our lease, we decided that major renovations/refurbishments should be done to maintain and improve the business. We approached the landlady on this basis and asked for a further 3 year lease to allow us to recoup our investment. Initially, the answer was that she wasn't going to relet to anyone, but we could buy the freehold for 7 million - heaven knows what it's worth now. We declined and didn't invest.
So, we let the place run down, whilst making every effort to recoup our original investment. My ex opened a new business at the same time - nothing to do with me, but that's what the owner assumed. She arrived unannounced one day and asked why we weren't renewing our lease? Well, after we explained that she hadn't offered it to us before, she said, "No problem. Just pay 3 years in advance". Well, we found another buyer who agreed whatever with the owner and we were happy to see the place go. The owners afterwards have made huge improvments and it's one of the busiest and largest bars on the Soi now.
The fact is that we'd already injected as much capital as we were prepared to at the outset. When more was needed, the owner made it cost-prohibitive from a lease point of view. It really don't matter whether you've got a 3 or a 3+3 or a 3+3+3 ad infinitum. Everyone's got to make a decision whether extra investment is worth it at that point in time. The fact that a bar may be buying a bottle of beer at 17B and selling for 50B only means someting when seen in conjunction with rent, overheads and what you expect to take out of it.
So, others arrived, injected their capital and the place moved on.
So, that follows on from Wanderlust's post. Just my experience and we didn't lose. It just needed someone else to take the risk on. After you've been here a few years, any increases in rents, key money, what everyone else is selling for/buying for, seem exorbitant, but to someone fresh here - as we all were at one stage - it dosn't look so bad. So, progress.
I wouldn't necessarily agree with TTM. Certainly, if you havn't allowed for maintenance/ development over the course of your lease, then you've made a big mistake. But sometimes, it just isn't worth the extra risk of more substantial investment when the ground rules are so apt to change in the wonderful country in which we live.

[Burger]

maybe the toilets etc were fine when the lease started but have deteriorated over time or have been damaged by malfunctioning equipment, customers, staff or weather; if a bar only has one or two years left on it's lease it will more than likely 'make do' until it knows what the new rent/length of lease is going to be.

This seems a bit tight on the part of the bar owners. Given the average size of a bar toilet, the cost of re-tiling (walls and floor) a toilet is 5,000 Baht and a complete Cotto sanitaryware set is 4,000.
If they don't think their customers deserve that small amount of re-investment, then what chance have we got.
The owners make the decision that the customers will not have the same level of service by deciding not to update the toilets to the original state, do they also make the decision to then drop the prices of their products accordingly to match this lower level of service ?

Burger