The FARANG Speaks 2 Much

I will never claim I honestly think that any of my ideas are worth implementing but sometimes they are worth writing about even if it is just for my own confessional tendencies. Meaning - it’s not easy buying a bar, deciding what to do with it and then bringing it all together in such a way that it might actually work but at the very least writing about some of the things we thought about doing might be funny - for some people.

We get asked a lot about what were we thinking buying a bar in Thailand, in a red light district and on top of that doing it knowing we had very little experience that would matter to this type of undertaking. We had never run a bar before, we didn’t speak Thai and we had very little experience running our own business in Asia since we were both previously employed in high tech. I did some light reading but no matter how hard I looked I never did run across the Doing Business in Thailand for Dummies book but I am sure if I did it would not have helped me be a better pimp, negotiate with the men in brown or manage a bunch of bar girls. The more I think about it the more I want to write the How to run a bar in Nana Plaza book but I am not sure that would make my Mom too happy.

If I had a dollar for every time someone came into the Bar and told us how to run it (don’t buy a bar), how to make money(start with more than u are willing to lose), what music to play(country western) and so on then I am sure I would be rich because it seemed in the early days everyone who came into the bar was an expert in how to run a bar. I have an open mind and I always listen to customers(that is where we get all the good stories) but I would always ask them had they run a bar before(no), had they owned a business in Thailand before(no) but they would always ensure me that since they were a frequent visitor to bars that they must know what it takes to run a bar. Well I am a frequent customer to bars as well and I can tell u first hand that being a customer has little in common with running a bar - let alone just running a small business. That being said I love to talking to other bar owners because I alsways learn something and usually gather another good story or 2. Point being that I think very little prepares u for running a bar other than the experience of having run one before. So there is a first time for everything and all we could do was go with our gut, listen to the customers(the sober ones) and remind ourselves that no matter how good our intentions that only experience, time and building a solid repeat customer base would matter.

So with that out of the way let me tell u one of my first "after the bar was open" ideas. Some of our ideas were hashed out before we opened and some of them came during nights working at the bar while I was having a good buzz. U know one of those perfect buzzes where u shoot good pool, u have amazing bouts of cerebal clarity and u can still tell who is hot and who isn’t. So during one of these bouts of clarity a very bad but interesting bar idea came to mind. I shouldn’t be sharing this because I will go to hell but one of my friends told me that sharing it was like confession and it would decrease my Karam hit count. We shall see…

So everyone always has the answer for how to have a packed bar in Nana - u get the hottest girls. Well - easier said than done since every bar has the same idea but there are not enough hot girls to go around and many times the hot ones don’t want to work for someone but choose the 1-2 Call(freelancer) route instead. So given that we all want hot girls what do you do with the opposite problem? Yes. U have to think about all sides of the equation because for every positive there is the reverse - meaning your bar may also attract the not so hot girls. Then what do you do?

Well if u r me: Stupid, buzzed and needing therapy u turn it into a positive marketing gimmick. You put a rack on the wall that holds a rope, u put a large button that activates a buzzer and an LED timer and u throw in a free beer. So let me run u through it. The rope and the buzzer sit together on the wall next to the entrance of the bar. When a not so hot girl cruises in the first guy to run over to the wall, activate the timer(which starts the revolving silent siren since we don’t want to warn her), rope her(u have seen a rodeo right?) and do it in under 30 seconds will get a free beer of choice. Okay. I am going to hell for even thinking about it but for a mere 15 seconds while I was dreaming it up I actually thought it might go over well. Somebody shoot me.