Starting Up with Robin Bayley @ Joseph Perks & Co.

So you’ve decided to open a bar. Congratulations! You have made a somewhat sober and seemingly rational decision to become a shambolic, semi-conscious wreck, barely held together by thousands of Post-It notes covered in endless to-do lists.

Say farewell to anything resembling sleep, fix yourself a few dozen espressos, and let’s take a bleary-eyed look at how we turned The Duke, an old neglected pub in St Clements, an almost forgotten part of town, into Joe Perks &Co, a funky all-day hangout for coffees, cocktails and the best hot dogs in town.

Step 1: Let’s see how deep those pockets really are.

Unless they carry a lot of change, you’re going to have to roll up your sleeves, grab a sledgehammer, and get cracking. Any really good refurbishment will uncover a hornets’ nest of underlying problems, but when you can finally sit back and enjoy a frosty beer in your laid-back booths, you’ll know just how much all that effort was worth.

Step 2: You’ll need help. A lot of it. And then probably a lot more.

Amid the chaos of a building site, you’ll have to make decisions that will affect the day-to-day life of your bar for years to come.

Ask friends and relatives for their advice, and then blame them when everything goes wrong.

Step 3: Remember that thing you had to do? The really important one? The one you didn’t add to a list?

Step 4: Lists are your friends.

Step 5: DON’T PANIC. There will be problems. Big ones, little ones, difficult ones, awkward ones, problems that knock you sideways, problems that wake you up smack bang in the middle of your nightly three-hour ration of sleep. Stay calm.

Whether you solve them or not (and there’s no guarantee) what matters most is a positive attitude. Which brings us to… Step 6: Smile. Always. A bar is so much more than somewhere to buy a drink or a bite to eat.

If all that any bar does is sell alcohol then pretty soon there’ll be nothing but supermarkets. Of course, if you sell fantastic cocktails at unbelievably low, low prices and the most flavoursome hot dogs in Britain (Giles Coren says so) then you’ll have a lot to smile about!

Step 7: Customers. You’ll probably need some of these. What good is your shiny new espresso/cocktail club with all those comfy bar stools and exciting calendar of events if there’s no-one there to enjoy it?

Hand out some flyers, print a few t-shirts, facegram your instatweets, you can even actually talk to people – however you choose to do it, you’ve got to let everyone know how awesome you are.

Step 8: Rest. When you get to this point, get in touch and let me know what that’s like.

TRY IT
Joseph Perks & Co,
76 St Clements Street, Oxford
joeperksandco.co.uk 01865 251431

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