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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
This one club I used to work at on my regular route has a night where they serve prime rib. I don't mind the meat, that's fine. The thing I don't like about it, is while it brings customers into the bar, they leave when their meal is over. I think they need to find some other incentive to keep those carnivores IN the club so we can actually make money off them if they're going to continue having this event. Most times, during prime rib night, you can't even sell a dance or anything because the guy doesn't want to be bothered while he's eating, or he's with his wife, and she gives you that wry look that says, "Go away, you bulimic tease!" I don't think this event is generating the business it's intended to. I also don't think it's being marketed to the right people, because mostly we get people who want to eat prime rib for eight dollars and do nothing more -A/K/A, cheap, meat eating, bastards. :O
So, like I said, I don't mind them having the dinner that night, but I do mind the way it affects the money we're supposed to be making there. I think they could do a lot more to encourage people to stay. Maybe have a raffle - give away a ticket with each dinner receipt and offer a prize... Like a free photo of the customer and the girl of his choice, or anything just to keep them there longer. Maybe offer a free cocktail with the purchase of every dinner plate in the hopes that will loosen them AND their wallet up. Another thing they could do is maybe change the day of the steak dinner so that it coincides with the traffic we get for the weekly amateur night contest. The amount of business we get on amateur night is insane.
I realize the dancers are supposed to also be drawing some percentage of business, but from what I've seen, and in my experience, nobody really wants to be bothered while they're eating, and for the most part, it looks like nobody wants to intrude upon someone while their prospective customer is eating. The other issue is, I personally don't want food or any other mysterious substances on my costumes, or person even if I were able to coax a dance or two from a customer who was in the middle of dinner. The whole event just seems "dancer unfriendly" to me.
I don't know. I'm not an expert, and I'm certainly no bar owner. There's probably a lot I don't know or understand about the magic of keeping a successful strip club in business. However, these are just a few things I've thought about since having worked in that particular establishment and others like it.
Also, when the girls who win Amateur night want to get on as regular dancers at this particular bar, they start out dancing in the sports bar in the basement. When our bar hosts feature dancers, sometimes we split the rotation between the upstairs and the downstairs so there's still a way we can be seen and work the floor while she's doing her thing. The stage down there has a piece of plywood over a HUGE (9 square feet, or so) in the stage. There's no pole. I think they removed it since the stage has that hole in it. Anyway, I wouldn't mind sharing our stages with them, but they make them dance down there and the whole thing seems like such a liability. I don't know how you can be sexy or safe when you're trying to maneuver around an unsecured piece of plywood. Someone's bound to fall into the hole, or trip on that board and fall off the stage. It's terrible.
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
My club just "fixed" the floor on the lower stage, but the thing is, the whole stage used to be done in this glossy black tile that broke easily, and the only reason they fixed the bottom stage was that all the tile directly around the pole had come off in pieces, so whenever you were spinning around the pole you had to really watch your footing or you would trip. But they only fixed the bottom half of the stage, and they did it in this weird neutral vinyl flooring that kind of glows under the black light. And it's kind of spongy-feeling--like when I do floorwork it almost feels like it's foam or something. But the rest of the stage is still the black tile. When you first see it, it looks like they ripped up the flooring and just haven't put anything else down yet.
I've worked at this club for two years, and this is the first time they've done anything with fixing the stage. And it was a half-assed job at best.
I wish they would redo the lap dance rooms. We have four right now, two real rooms behind the DJ booth, and then two tiny little cubicles right next to the bar. The two real rooms have these cheap off-white loveseats, and one of them has been ripped tons of times and there's stuffing pouring out all over the place.
The chairs we have all over the club are these little squat rolly-chairs that have this weird industrial-grade upholstery--it feels like the carpet you'd find in an elementary school. And they're stained from spilled drinks and god knows what else, and it's gross. Plus they don't even roll properly half the time.
Most of the bar stools are wobbly. Speaking of the bar, the floor around it is all fucked-up. They need to fix that, too.
I would appreciate real dressing rooms with decent-sized lockers. Right now there's only four big lockers in there, and most of the girls share them between two people. There aren't any good mirrors, and the lighting sucks.
They need to get a decent quality sound system and lighting for the stage. The manager seems to have an affinity for cheap neon-colored flashing lights, like you see at Spencers. Every couple of months he'll buy some new little gadget and hook it up. We have all sorts of strobes and flashing primary colors and those weird laser-writing things. Now he's talking about replacing the normal rotating pole on the back stage with a stationary pole filled with the water that bubbles and turns neon colors. But it all looks thrown-together and cheap, and the DJ doesn't have a clue how to operate them anyway. The sound system is also constantly fucking up. They really need to get a decent board in the booth, and rewire all the speakers.
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
^ Hahaha...I totally have a love/hate relationship with dives.
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
Renovate and ENLARGE the LD room! Guys wont wait 20 minutes for a dance, and its wasting OUR time!
Give us a nice dressing room. It sucks getting changed in a hallway (basically)
Actually TRAIN your staff so they dont f&*k with MY business.
(I cant wait to leave in 14 weeks)
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
Take the club from the owner and fire the manager! Neither of them know how to run a business. The owner is a scum bag who always bitches about how all women, strippers, girls in their teens and early twenties, and anyone who isn't a stay-at-home church-every-week mom from the age of 15 is a whore, and the manager is always nodding off, doesn't do his job (he's the dj AND the doorman/bouncer, and can't do either) and he's too much of a pushover.
Put in a PA system. All it would require is a microphone! Push for dances/tipping, introduce the girls, inspire some kind of excitement, not have to run around the whole damn club to find a bitch for her stage set, etc.
Require girls to stay on stage for their set and forbid them from dancing on customers' laps. Then we'd get girls with actual TALENT, and no one wants to go in a strip club to watch some skank give an other customer a lap dance. And at the same time, it becomes expected and makes it harder for those of us who actually DANCE during our stage set. And what's the incentive to buy a lap dance when she's on your lap for a dollar at a time.
Did I mention get rid of the owner and manger. Oh, and the part-time manager.... put him in charge! He makes sure the club is clean, and he actually turns away drunks/underaged kids spending allowance money, and pushes for dances. One guy asked him when I was working next so he could get a VIP ~next~ time (which has never actually gone through when a customer said that), and he encouraged the guy to buy said VIP and pointed him to the ATM.
Make sure the location of the ATM doesn't show up as our club's name (or the location) on account statements, and have a sign on the damn thing so customers don't have to worry about their wives/parents finding out where they are. Plus, a $5 surcharge... Even if they are too cheap to pay that, they would still be getting money to spend on us. And get rid of that $200 max and 2 time withdrawal limit ;) Oh, and make sure it works...
SELL THE POOL TABLE!!! I'm sick of those assbutts (yes, I just said "assbutts") who come in and play pool so they can look for free. I've tried hustling with it, but the guys that come in to play just aren't spenders. Hell, get the girls to sign it/pose on it, auction it off and give us a cut.
Get a liquor license! Ok, I know in this area that's hard for an adult business, but it would eliminate the 18-20 year olds, and keep customers in our club and not going to the bar in the same building.
Oh, and don't allow girls to go to that bar while they're supposed to be working... Unless they're dragging customers in, but I rarely see that. Instead, I see customers in our club, then going to get a drink with an other girl, and often times they end up not coming back. Plus, y ou can give girls a commission on drinks they sell/get a custy to buy for them.
EDIT: Make sure to have the schedule out in a timely manner so we can tell our custies when we work. And take the 2 minutes to put it up on SCL. Advertisement would help. Also, a site... My manager said he wanted to do that and I offered to design it/ set it up (for free! as long as he pays for the domain/ space/ all that poop) and he was like "no, I'll do it." And it still hasn't happened...
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
Quote:
Originally Posted by
BoxOfPandora
EDIT: Make sure to have the schedule out in a timely manner so we can tell our custies when we work. And take the 2 minutes to put it up on SCL. Advertisement would help. Also, a site... My manager said he wanted to do that and I offered to design it/ set it up (for free! as long as he pays for the domain/ space/ all that poop) and he was like "no, I'll do it." And it still hasn't happened...
I don't understand why clubs don't use things like SCL, myspace, facebook, these are all free! Its just extreme laziness and missing out on free ads and gaining potential customers. It would be really easy to create a myspace account, and get some girls to pose for pics. If some girls don't want to show their face, then fine, let them pose from behind or "hide" their face with their hair. This wouldn't require too much maintenance and allow clubs to announce specials, and advertise for free. They should keep the info current, and let the customers know that the info is current. Every club should have its own website these days, but at the very least the club should take advantage of things like myspace/facebook, if they are too cheap/lazy to get a website.
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
Quote:
Originally Posted by
hot4ablackchick
I don't understand why clubs don't use things like SCL, myspace, facebook, these are all free! Its just extreme laziness and missing out on free ads and gaining potential customers. It would be really easy to create a myspace account, and get some girls to pose for pics. If some girls don't want to show their face, then fine, let them pose from behind or "hide" their face with their hair. This wouldn't require too much maintenance and allow clubs to announce specials, and advertise for free. They should keep the info current, and let the customers know that the info is current. Every club should have its own website these days, but at the very least the club should take advantage of things like myspace/facebook, if they are too cheap/lazy to get a website.
And it's so silly because LITERALLY EVERY OTHER kind of business does this except strip clubs! You don't even have to be bothered to make a website and it's fucking FREE. Speaking of which only one out of seven clubs I've worked at even had a website and that one was out of date with little info. Pretty freakin ridic.
Also hey Serena! I agree with everything you said about the changes, that club could use a facelift. A CR would be really nice. Also maybe they should buy some actual glasses instead of those plastic cups.
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
Hahaha, last week we lost our schedule, literally just vanished. And with many discrepancies on who was working what night, I told the manager just to make sure it's done before he leaves (because calling him the day we work is just frikkin ridiculous!) and to put it up on SCL. And he did! :o
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
Quote:
Yeah I totally agree. If I go to a club and there are 30 girls working and only 5 or less are attractive, then I'm not coming back and I'm definetely not recommending to anyone. If I go to a club and they only have ten girls but 8 are attractive, then thats where I'm going for sure, but I know that clubs are dumb and only care about house fees.
Welcome to the 'new' strip club economics ... clubowners versus dancers ! From the clubowner's short-sighted viewpoint, the less money he has to spend repairing / remodeling the club the greater his profit margin will be. And the more dancers he can convince to pay the nightly stage / house fee, the greater his profit margin will be. If the lack of club upkeep or lack of 'quality' dancers results in a few less customers coming in, from the clubowners point of view he's only out a handful of cover charges plus bar profits on a few drinks - and hiring two more dancers to collect additional nightly stage / house fees from will more than make up for the club's 'loss'.
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
I agree with advertising!!! My club doesn't advertise worth crap. if we want to advertise, we have to take business cards and pass them out ourselves. >.>
Re-decorate!! The walls/floor/ceiling are black, and the floor has neon colored paint spattered all over it. there's a thing of strobe light on the far side of our stage that doesn't work, and just hangs there. Some of the ceiling tiles are off kilter and there are gaping holes in the ceiling. The club LOOKS scary. And thats not cool. >:(
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
!!!Rawr!!!
The whole manager VERSUS the dancer thing is beginning to piss me off too, and I've only been dancing for a few months now. I mean, we REALLY need to pick up the pace and get shit moving. At this rate, our club has a very shitty reputation and customers have openly admitted to me at the end of their night or in follow up conversations that they came in with low expectations. And these changes aren't hard to make at all.
Advertise better- I know that law in my club's area won't allow for most advertising methods, like billboards and radio ads. Hell, we barely managed to get our number in the white pages a couple years ago. But what little advertising options we do have, utilize. Fix our MySpace, because it looks like it was thrown together in five minutes and never touched again except to play apps. Use their playlist feature for the music on it instead of one song, and add a background or something so it's not just the blank looking default. Get more business cards for the employees and encourage them to hand them out. Don't just tell girls that it's okay to get cards, help them get them like you help us get shoes, latex, etc.
Get a proper house mom- The entire point of having a house mom is so that she can help the other girls stay in good looking order and school them on attitude. I would assume that the proper house moms other girls have told me about in the bigger clubs they worked carried extra little things with her for emergencies like nail files, scissors, latex, tissues, mints, thread and needles- like a little bridal kit tailored for the strip club- and actually set a good example for our girls. Our house mom just doesn't care. She makes a solid salary like the employees to sit in the dressing room or DJ booth and talk shit, only dancing for old regulars. We love our HM, but she just doesn't do the duties of an HM, you know?
Hire a couple more employees- I've seen customers walk away thoroughly dissatisfied because of overall service from employees. Let's stick one guy at the door, one at the bar, the DJ, the manager, and a bouncer or two. It's hard to keep the place running smooth, especially on busy nights, with only four employees working.
Repair the interior of the club- While we don't have the nicest or most comfortable chairs on the floor, it gets the job done without complaint from the customers. They're like those cheap, vinyl ones with a little bit of padding that you see around tables in fast food joints. What DOES need to be fixed is the chairs in room dances and the couches in VIP. The chairs are mismatched and some wobble, while the VIP couches are all part of a living room set that's torn nearly to shreds and the cushions never stay on. Fix the carpet and WORK OUT THAT DAMNED TINY INCLINE BESIDE THE DJ BOOTH. It's only about an inch, and near impossible to see, but girls and customers alike have tripped over it. Our heels catch in inconsistent seams in the carpet and make us fall too.
- Repair the outside of the club- Customers hate bouncing in lake sized potholes in the lot.
- Add features- Even if it's a regular dancer in the club, do a feature show once a week or so on busy nights. If a dancer can catch guys' attention, they will seek her out for more. This leads to more sales for the dancer, which leads to more profit for the club since they take a percentage of our earnings as their house fee instead of a flat rate. And if a girl makes a good bit off her show, add a bit of themed merchandise to it. I'm pitching a dark show under the black lights that uses flourescent paint and some multicolor strobe balls for a feature and if the manager likes the idea, I may press for merch to go with it like glowsticks and light up stuff. Splits the profits between myself and the club and voila, more money for both of us.
I could go on with more, but that's all I can think of and I'm late. So I'll talk to you gals later tonight after work if I can come up with more.
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
My club has a smaller room upstairs, that is not being used. At all. And no CR. I know that in my city, no clubs have CRs (unlike London, where I learned) but if there is a room not even being used, what could they possibly lose? Or turn it all into private rooms for dances. I can't understand it!!!!
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
Ok one: fire the weasley ass VIP manager who solicits my customers like a fucking pimp and gets mad when I yell because he isn't my fucking boss.
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
Stop allowing the dancers to let guys grope them on stage for a dollar. Mind you, this was a club that took a percentage of every dance sale. Incredibly hard to sell a $40 dance when the guy can touch everything on stage for a buck.
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
^ Argh!!! I'm having the same problem!
My club is nude and NO CONTACT....which I stick to (along with maybe 2 other girls in the entire club's roster). And yet management is allowing the girls on stage to do boobs in face, groin contact, even some grinding! On STAGE! What are they thinking????
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
Teach bar staff what a f*cking Black titanium credit card is! Don't treat my drunk $250K limit credit card man like a drunk turd when he is my freaking drunk ATM.
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
Elvia, Charlie- THANK YOU! Not only does my club allow girls to get away with that, but EXPECTS it. I CAN'T make money not doing it because the classier customers steer clear of our club. I don't play the dumb girl act, which has gotten me some custies who buy VIPs and dances, and tip me well on stage, but they never want to come back. We do dollar lap dances and a lot of girls don't even ask before getting on a customer's lap and grinding for a dollar, and it has scared way one of my customers who don't know how to say "no thanks" when they're not even asked, or even how to ask them to stop after the first dollar.
I suppose if I was a coffee addict, I would be set with "payment" (ie- many offers to go get coffee) from these guys after my club scared them away...
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
Ugh, my club expects us to give too much away on stage too. The DJ encourages customers to play a game called "coochieball", which is basically just the girls on stage spreading their legs and the guys throwing ones. When we are collecting tips we are encouraged to turn around and show off the kitty for an extra dollar-the only official rule is "don't spread your lips for a dollar", and lots of girls do this anyway. And then all the cheapos who only grudgingly gave you a single dollar bend over and watch the next guy's show for free.
They also won't fix the timers in the couch dance room and it is really fucking annoying! They spend all kinds of money on new couches and lighting systems, but half the timers above the fancy new couches are broken and you have to run around like an idiot looking for one that works while the customer is ready for his dance. And when it's busy sometimes you can't find one at all! Of course, now that bachelor party season is over it's slow as shit, so I guess I can't complain. ::) And for some reason, management, which is otherwise very reasonable and helpful, never responds with anything but attitude when you mention this to them. :O
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
HOLY SHIT management is fixing up the club finally!
They've replaced the awful VIP couches w/ brand new ones, and i hear theyre planning to replace the cracked mirrors!
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
Rant:
Fire the fucking junkie stripper who started hysterically bawling at the bar last night because a customer didn't want a dance with her. And she started screaming at both the DJ and the bouncer at different points for various issues she has--seriously shrieking at them, in the middle of the club. And who went up to every guy tonight and bitched and ranted about how much she hates all the other girls there, how much she hates the management, the club, the area, her life, etc., then asked for money because she hadn't made any money tonight because the other girls were such bitches, and then back to square one. She owes the house like $145 in back house fees (our house is only $25 on weeknights and $30 on weekends, so it takes awhile to accumulate $145), and the manager says he doesn't want to fire her till he gets all that money back. It's NOT GOING TO FUCKING HAPPEN, he needs to just cut his losses and fire her, because she's driving guys away.
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
Dam serenasin, where in the hell do you work? It sounds like a hole in the wall. Maybe you and the dancers should get together and sign a petition or strike if your club is shitty as u make it sound.
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
Oh my the worst place I have worked sofar was a dive called the FoxyLady.
Where do I begin...?
First of all it's a decrepit building in the middle of the woods.
Second of all, maybe if they lost the creepy golden-girls patio decor they would draw a nicer clientele.
If they invested in a liquor license instead of tacky holiday decorations... (seriously. I'm talking paper cut out pilgrims.)
5 dollar dances. Barf.
A DJ!!! omg these poor girls rely on a jukebox.
A BOUNCER. I'm sorry the golden girls probably couldn't defend against a gun-wielding maniac
And they fined those poor dancers to death. Not to mention they liked to invent new rules and not tell anyone.
Oh and yelling at your dance staff while they are in the middle of a private dance for a customer... priceless.
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
^ Damn!! Sounds like you have some good stories for our "You know you're working in a dive when..." thread.
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jessie_tinydancer
Teach bar staff what a f*cking Black titanium credit card is! Don't treat my drunk $250K limit credit card man like a drunk turd when he is my freaking drunk ATM.
customers with black cards are THE BEST. but btw, the limit isn't 250k, there's no limit and actually customers must spend at least 250k per year. ;)
and nadia's post is too long to quote but nadia if you're reading i have a question about this part
"Get more business cards for the employees and encourage them to hand them out. Don't just tell girls that it's okay to get cards, help them get them like you help us get shoes, latex, etc."
latex? you wear latex at this club?
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Re: Very simple shit your club COULD do to make more $, but DOESN'T
My club is beautifull and pretty new so i have no complaints in that department....BUT...i agree with everyone who is talking about hiring standards....I mean the club is georgeous but there are only about 5 attractive girls.... and I also agree with training girls how to dance and have stage presence...when every girl goes up and gets doggy style on the floor and shakes her but its kinda repetitive....plus is would make me really happy if we got rid of the junkies and if the bouncers would actually tell guys to stop the damn touching (its supposed to be not allowed...girls that allow it must pay off the bouncers cause he seems to not yell at certain girls) so that when i tell a guy he cant touch he doesnt give me the "ugh you suck" look/comment