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Comment by edf13 | Hacker News Reader

Your paying for the business + history

In Montana, you're paying for the liquor license. It's not uncommon to see hole-in-the-wall bars in 2000 person towns go for $1 million. They are quota-ed and similar to the NYC taxi medallion system.

This is correct. On the other hand since tasting rooms can operate without a liquor license it creates a real advantage for small brewereries etc. My town of 5000 has two mircobreweries, a distillery and a cidery and Montana ranks second (IIRC) in breweries per capata.

Plus all the really cool bars are out in the middle of the mountains nowhere near a town.

True story. I was born in Ennis, population single digits thousands. They have a brewery and distillery.

Does that actually recoup? Or are they buying those licenses to use in more populated areas? (curious if they are tied to the town or not)

If I remember correctly, it depends on when and by what authority they were issued. I think some are specific to a town whereas others extend to the whole county.

As with Uber and medallions, the increasing popularity of craft breweries able to operate with an inexpensive license has led to some big legislative battles. The Montana Tavern Association (MTA, liquor license holders) try to crush the craft breweries every legislative session. They have limited the taphouses to some extent: they can only serve four pints per person per day and they have to close at 8 PM. Also similar to Uber vs taxi drivers the general public likes the breweries and the MTA struggles to maintain a popular image while trying to legislate away erosion of their license values.

Is that in the USA? Sounds very unbelievable to me, here (in eastern EU) we demonstrate if people try to limit opening hours few days a year!

New Mexico is similar. Incorporated Towns and Cities as well as Counties can issue beer and wine licenses, a generally issue them frequently and cheaply, but hard liquor is only issues by the state there are limits, and they are transferrable, so the license itself can easily sell for a million depending on the license. Recent sales prices in NM: https://bit.ly/2YyzzWf (PDF)

Not really. You'd really just be paying for the history.

Spending a quarter million dollars on a four wood (edit: brick) walls and a door in a podunk Montana town that is about a 100 mile drive to the nearest town isn't a business purchase. You likely wouldn't recoup the cost in your lifetime.

> Spending a quarter million dollars on a four wood walls and a door in a podunk Montana town that is about a 100 mile drive to the nearest town

From the OP:

> The Jersey Lilly was the town’s first brick building, built in 1914 as the first bank of a very different Ingomar.

> The nearest town, Forsyth, is “only” 44 miles away. “That’s really close in Montana, trust me.”

If you want to write a dismissive comment, go ahead, but at least get the facts straight (which were clearly stated in the first three paragraphs of the OP).

I mean, he's got a point. Forsyth has less than 2000 people in it. As someone who used to live in Montana, the nearest town worth mentioning is Billings which is 111 miles away, and the nearest town worth really going to is Missoula which is 371 miles.

It all depends on your point of view. I have a nephew who lives outside of Roy, population 108. He grew up in central South Dakota but moved to Montana because South Dakota was getting way too crowded.

Ha! It is crazy how different perspectives can be depending on where you're from. When I moved up to Montana in 2011 they had just broken 1,000,000 population for the first time in the state's history and all the locals were talking about how crazy it was. Meanwhile I also thought it was crazy, because I had just moved from a place where there were a million people within five miles of me. A quick google shows that Montana still has just one area code - 406 - for the entire state.

I went to grades 1 to 8 at a rural one room school house with about a dozen other kids. My high school was about 600 students. Then I went to a university with about 20,000. Adjustment in that direction is not easy either.

I wonder how my mother did it: she was a one room school teacher during the Depression and moved to Manhattan for WW II after getting divorced (where she met and married my father).

I have relatives in the Dakotas who get pissed at traffic lights in general. As in, they live in a county without a single traffic light.

There unfortunately is a very bad habit of some drivers in these areas of blowing stop signs because they are used to so little traffic/people in general. But obviously the consequences can be horrible (see Bill Janklow, ex-South Dakota governor who then later became an ex-con).

Boseman

Forsyth itself has a population of under 2,000. Barely a town, if even.

Having lived in Montana for 2 years myself, I don't consider Forsyth a town worth noting. Billings is the closest town that has a decent population, and it's 110 miles away by car.

Brick or wood (fixed my original comment for ya), my point was it's a simple building in a tiny "town". It's not worth the money as a business purchase, but would be a pleasure buy.

Not sure why my comment needed to be pedantically torn apart.

Because IF you are going to be sarcastically dismissive you ought to at least get the details right.

I don't think the details are critical to their point though. The fact that it's a brick building with backstory doesn't immediately turn it into a sound business decision.

What was sarcastic about their remark? I had no issue with it and your reaction surprises me.

History doesn't pay the bills when you're in the middle of nowhere. Also, I'm sure all the other abandoned buildings around here have stories.

I gotta assume in this case you're more paying for the history.. can't imagine there's as lot of business with 13 residents and nearest city being 45 minutes away.

It sounds like they do fine; only beer in 100 miles is a pretty good business proposition. They also go through 1200 pounds of pinto beans a year, so somebody's buying food there.

That's about 3.5 pounds of beans a day. Which would make maybe 4 or so gallons of soup, that's 512fl oz or 32 16oz portions.

1200 lbs a year, assuming a half pound per serving, is only 2400 servings a year, or about six a day. I can't imagine six bowls of beans does much to pay the bills even in rural Montana.

A half pound of beans is an awful lot for a serving.

Really? The recipes I found seemed to use 3 1lb cans of beans per 4 people. That's 3/4 lb of beans per person. Also, this is Montana, they don't shy from larger portions, a pound a person wouldn't surprise me.

Just because the town only has 14 residents doesn't mean there's nobody passing through or otherwise visiting.

Looks like a corral for rodeo, cattle auction, county fair, etc. next door just south of the bar. Appears to be used.

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