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I worked bar and restaurant for 25 years. I would never, ever open or own a restaurant voluntarily. The margins are minuscule and require huge up-front costs with micro-managed inventory, labor and quality control to break even.

Bars however are a dream. Inventory control is simply tracking portions and comps. Outside of garnishes nothing rots or goes bad. And assuming tips are good, labor is no worry either. We had a saying: "In good times the bar business is good. In bad times it's even better because everyone needs to cry into their beer..."

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Yeah it’s funny that she ever mentions booze, where the markups are 200-500%. If you can use your tables and food to sell bottles of wine, you can really improve your bottom line.

Ah the benefits of selling an addictive substance in a market with a large base of addicts and a legal environment that largely shields you from liability for even the fairly direct consequences of your product (such as drunk driving after serving at places and times where the non-availability of alternatives guarentees that most of your patrons will be driving).

Most customers who have a glass of wine or beer with their dinner don't qualify as addicted. Also, the restaurants make the same (or even more profit) when selling alcohol-free beverages with their food.

Yeah, but I don't generally sit down and drink 3 cokes in one sitting. Alcohol is a great money maker because there's a large standard deviation to how many drinks a given person might order. It would be very rare for a customer to drink 3 cokes with dinner but not uncommon for someone to order 3 beers.

When I am out in larger groups, the number of drinks varies little with what was ordered, be it beer, alcohol-free beer or other beverages. This is one medium to large sized glass of beverage for a lunch and several in the evening. Coke might be an exception, but it is very rare, that someone orders coke in a restaurant. Usually you have fruit juices of many variations, often as a "Schorle", that is fruit juice mixed with sparkling water. Or just water. And the prices differ only little between a glass of beer and of juice.

Perhaps I should clarify: my statement applies for Germany and probably holds true for large parts of Europe.

> Yeah, but I don't generally sit down and drink 3 cokes in one sitting

Do you generally sit down and drink 3 beers in one sitting?

> It would be very rare for a customer to drink 3 cokes with dinner but not uncommon for someone to order 3 beers.

At home, I drink much as I'm thirsty for, be it soda, beer, wine, tea, water... I certainly don't drink more just because it's alcoholic. I might drink less, or switch to something else, if I'm starting to feel drunk and it's not an occasion for such.

At a restaurant, I order less when alcohol is involved. I prefer to have my senses about me if I'll be driving home...

Where I drink 5 or 6 with lunch. Not coke - sweet tea.

Are you arguing for prohibition? Or just prohibition outside of a few handful of cities where driving is uncommon?

I wasn't arguing for anything-- it's just an observation.

A bar would be a very different and less profitable business if they had the normal spectrum of liability other businesses have when their actions result in predictable harm. Or even if just law enforcement weren't effectively prevented from staking out bars and stopping obviously drunk patrons as soon as they started to drive.

Similarly, I also believe they'd be much less profitable if not for the rather alarming amount of addiction and abuse.

I don't think prohibition is a good idea but the fact that I'm opposed to prohibition doesn't make me blind to the externalities that bars create which are a component of their profitability.

There are lots of less than perfect things in the world. We can make them better by willing to discuss them and not being to quick to assume that any criticism is a call for a prohibition. In this case, especially, there was a comparison with other businesses and more than anything I wanted to point out that it wasn't a fair comparison because of bars unusual amount of externalized costs.

I don't think better enforcement of drunk driving laws would force bars to change. Why do you believe that?

Well, like, food is addictive too. In fact, pretty much anything and everything is addictive to someone, no matter how mundane or weird.

Are you suggesting that alcohol addiction is equivalent to 'pretty much anything and everything [being] addictive to someone'?

Now that just makes me wonder how the economics pans out in an Islamic country.

There's always a way to make healthy profits without dealing in immoral and despicable practices.

I wouldn't say always - it becomes a lot harder if your competitors are willing to stoop and you don't have enough customers who care!

It's not immoral to sell someone a drink that they want to have with their meal.

It's been proven what the dangers of alcohol are. Practically the only benefits are monetary for the seller.

I don't drink much these days but I think that's taking it a little far. You could make the same argument about fatty foods and many other things.

There are non-drink culinary uses for it too. The wholesale banning of alcohol misses the point a lot of the time. I had a friend who taught cake decorating and it's common to mix high concentration alcohol with coloured dust to paint on sugar flowers because it's a great solvent, evaporates quickly, and doesn't soak into the sugar. No one eats this part of the cake. But in some countries with Islamic students they were so unwilling to be anywhere near alcohol they used water. Perhaps I'm mistaken but I thought the original intent of those commands was regarding intoxication (which I don't fully disagree with) so this seems odd to me.

Correct, it's mainly to avoid intoxication and the ramifications that come out of it. However, I agree with what those students did. They have principles and they stuck to them. The alcohol could have mixed with the food for instance, even though it wasn't meant to be consumed directly. Secondly, someone could unknowingly consume it thinking it was edible.

As to your first point, highly processed foods are definitely something to watch out for. However, the effects of alcohol are immediate, and can be seen in a single sitting. Countless instances of rape, drunk driving, and homicides that come out of it. You won't see someone consume a couple of meals at a fast food place then lose his decision making ability for instance.

turns out the article is mostly focused on US restaurants; but I agree, German street food is not complete without a Pislner.

> German street food is not complete without a Pilsner

German here. For lunch, no one I know ever drinks alcoholic beverages (except maybe when going to a nice restaurant with the whole family on the weekend). And I don't think people are eating street food for dinner all that much, except maybe Döner. But even at Döner places, I don't think I've ever seen people drinking beer. They mostly don't drink anything, and some drink Ayran.

Well for some cafe and restaurants Shisha.

Considering she runs a takeaway Streetfood place i highly doubt she ever intended "restaurants" to be meaning "... and also bars"

>Bars however are a dream. As long as the location is good and the clientele are don't fight, get unruly or drunk drive.

Ideal would be somewhere like NYC that's mostly walkable. Can't just open up a bar at the end of the universe. Unless talking cow being served.

I once worked for a chain of nightclubs. We used a poor man's form of demographic analysis. We looked to see where the major franchise food operations were building and would shop for a property there. People eat and people drink...

This isn’t a poor man’s analysis. This is what major business do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jILgxeNBK_8

Most cities are developing at least a couple bars clustered together, and they are pretty universally well attended by millenials. Previous generations might feel guilt or shame about spending a night at the bars. Modern parents are much more sensible and hire a sitter and rideshare to a brewery every now and then. Some bars and brewerys have a more substantial meal service as well, and it's not unheard of to bring your kid in tow during dinner hours.

To me, its a business that will only get more profitable as younger generations become much more sensible adults around social drinking. Outside of a pandemic, that is. Even my parents generation seems to be seeing a resurgence in going out to bars now that kids have grown up and moved away. My mom now frequents tequila bars with her friends. It doesn't even matter if it's a cold climate. Throw on the game, buy a few heat lamps, and have a special on pitchers.

Drinking culture is seeing a huge resurgence in the 4 U.S. metros I've lived in the last few years imo, although I don't have any particular data to point to off hand. Given the increasing secularization of american culture, and the acceptance of the fact that you can indeed have a bender with your friends on a weekend and still pass your medical school exams, I see no reason why bars aren't the best bet in

So I know (not personally) this guy named Ian McCollum. He's kind of well known on youtube, filming/writing/presenting on a topic that is personally very interesting to him.

He graduated from Purdue with a degree in mechanical engineer. But he didn't want to settle with a 9 to 5 job and a normal life, just to pay his bills. So instead he earned some extra small pile of money after college and set up a low cost life style in Arizona, with off grid house etc. And now he doesn't have to spend life in 9 to 5 job but instead travels around filming/interviewing/presenting on a passion project of his.

So how did he get that bit of enough extra money within 2 - 3 years (I think) after college to pay to get himself set up with that life style? He went to a bartender school and worked as a bartender. That earned him enough chunk of money that he could set up an off grid house in AZ and get on with his passion project.

If you listen to Ian McCollum presenting on his topic, you can tell he would've been a very good bartender. Calm, articulate, polite.

Why didn't he just get a engineering job for 2 or 3 years? Presumably he would have made lot more money.

I don't know anything about the profitability of the area of engineering that he is interested in. Perhaps you could look into it and report back.

I'm sure he was a very good bartender.

Knowing a few other mechanical engineers myself, finding a decent paying job as a mechanical engineer was nearly impossible. At least 10 - 15 years ago.

So the revelation from his story is that working as a bartender can bring in quite a bit of money due to high margin of alcohol and bigger tip.

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