Big City Vs. Small Town Clubs
Reading Alexxa Hex's post on strip club extortion prompted me to start this thread.
After spending years working in big city clubs, and over the last 4 years moved to spending most of my dancing time at small town clubs, I have noticed that the mentality of the owners is different in most cases.
Big city club owners tend to be more greedy and more nitpicky when it comes to running their clubs, whereas small town club owners seem like they aren't aggressive enough when it comes to making money.
Small town club owners where I book run maybe 4-7 girls per night and many pay $300-$400 a week for a 6 night week of 7-9 hour shifts, The pay comes usually from collecting $5 per dance which goes towards our pay. The pay is used to attract different girls every week to keep the customers interested. Many of these clubs who collect $5 per dance, require payment in advance for the dances. They don't realize that they are sometimes losing dance sales by taking spontaneous spending out of the equation.
Many small town clubs get no cover (although some do charge $3-$5), get only $1.50 for a can of soda or bottle of water, and $3.50-$4.00 per mixed drink. Most have no house fees, and we just tip out the DJ $10 (if there is one) and the bar $5 or $10 depending on the club. There is no VIP (except for bigger small towns like Fargo and Sioux Falls) and the few clubs that have merchant accounts don't take any cut from our dance money if we sell dances on a credit card.
These small clubs seem like they could get a little more money than they do for drinks, be "a little" more aggressive on pushing dances (bring a DJ in where there isn't one, or a hipper more jivey DJ in where they have a DJ).
The mentality almost seems totally opposite from the big city clubs. Small town clubs have us do 20 minute sets, and panic if there is not a girl always on stage (which makes no sense). I guess they are afraid of losing customers, but many times when it is slow, guys aren't watching the stage anyway.Many bigger city DJ's are faster talking and taught to push the upsells.
The smaller owner seems like he/she is afraid, or doesn't know what is going on in the city clubs. They could be making more money without losing the customer base they have, and probably could grow their customer base more if they copied some of the things the big city clubs did. Big city customers come to smaller town clubs all the time, but poor advertising is hurting the small town clubs business growth. And some of their buildings need a face lift to boot.
On the other hand, the big city club owner is overly greedy, charging as much as the market can bear for everything, making the waitresses pay house fees, which is horrible, having more waitresses than needed, coning off half the parking lot, forcing customers to valet park, gouging on the cost of champagne, bottled water, soda, and probably getting at least $1 more than necessary for a beer or mixed drink.
There are only a handful of clubs both big city and small town that are run in a professional, yet non hicky or non greedy manner.
It just amazes me how differently these two types of owners see the business. /:O