But we also took some ideas from Berlin, New-York and as far afield as Dubai! Don’t be shy and open your eyes □ We chose to open a Scottish-themed pub, so obviously, a lot of our inspiration comes from the time we spent in Scotland, from the bars of the capital city to the remote guest houses of the Highlands. Now that you know where you want to go, you can start making plans, visiting places, taking pictures, searching the internet, spend hours on Pinterest and travel as much as possible to see what people do in other countries. We added ourselves a difficulty as we wanted to produce our own beers, so in addition to the main bar, we had to also take into account the creation of a microbrewery which wasn’t an easy part! In this “study” part, you need to figure out where you wanna go: what will be the exact concept of your bar? What kind of products/experiences do you want to offer? Do you want to only serve drinks or also offer something to eat? Who’s your target customer? It took us almost 2 years from the initial idea to the official opening. Doesn’t happen ( especially in France where every admin duty is a heavy burden). Oh, and if you start from scratch, don’t be like us and think you can start looking for a venue in January and open the doors of your shiny new bar in July. So yes, it will be fun, you’ll meet amazing people, but it will also be hard and you’ll encounter some complete pricks as well □īeside the obvious market study (I mean, are you sure you want to open yet another hidden prohibition-style cocktail bar in an area that already counts 14987 of those? Or the contrary, there may be a reason why there’s no whisky bar in this remote 320-inhabitant village…), first thing you need to check is your financial capacity, there’s no need to start viewing venues if you don’t know exactly what you can or cannot afford, you’ll be wasting your time and as we said earlier, you don’t have time.Īs we were complete newbies when we started looking for premises about 2 years ago, we had no idea about the financial needs implied by such a project: it’s not only about giving his money to the owner and his commission to the estate agent, there are far more people to take into account… And they don’t work for free! Broker, attorney, consultants… They will all take their piece of the cake. Owning and running a bar is rewarding but is a LOT of commitment. Time is what you’ll be lacking the most so be prepared to work 8422547 hours a day even before the business officially opens. Step back and look at the overall pictureīefore jumping too fast into anything, ask yourself the right questions: why do I want to open a bar? Will I be able to completely change my lifestyle (I mean, it may not be a good call if you’re expecting a baby or planning to welcome one in the family anytime soon… As silly as it sounds, same goes with a new cat, puppy or a relative you need to care of)? Can I work late hours? Am I ready to say no to all fun Saturday night parties, birthday events etc because I’ll be working? Am I passionate enough? “Hey, what if we stopped everything we’re doing and open our own bar?!” – Yeah that sounds amazing, let’s do that! It’s been a very long process from the initial idea to the actual opening and I wanted to share it with you with some tips along the way, if anyone is thinking about taking the same journey anytime soon! If not, shoot me an email.As you may have seen if you’ve been following my recent adventures on social media, we (we as me and my partner) recently open our very own Scottish Pub & Microbrewery in Toulouse (FR) called the Hopscotch. If a link below is broken, just pop the recipe into the search bar and it should come up. All of my favorite bakeware, kitchen utensils, ingredients, etc. I strongly urge you to keep at least one in your oven (even if it’s brand new, it is likely not calibrated). I keep three oven thermometers in my oven at all times. I’m a huge proponent of using homemade brown sugar and two fold vanilla extract because they just taste better when made from scratch. I typically bake with neutral oils (like grapeseed, safflower, etc.) and suggest you do the same. it’s worth it (for both the accuracy it provides as well as the fact that it results in fewer dirty dishes). But I’d suggest doing yourself a solid and investing in a scale. I scoop flour by first fluffing it with a fork, scooping with my measuring cup (because nobody has time to be spooning flour into a cup), then leveling with the back of a butterknife. Ingredients are scooped first, then weighed. It's important to keep in mind that, unless specified otherwise, all ingredients are used at room temperature. On this page you'll find a collection of every recipe that appears on the (now archived) blog.
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