Chris Schneider (00:01.45)
In today's episode, learn the scheduling mistake costing you thousands in late night sales, why your late night menu is driving guests away, and the critical service gap you were probably missing after midnight.

Chris Schneider (00:16.696)
Today we're diving into the three common, often overlooked issues that are decimating late night business and more importantly, how to fix them to quickly recapture that critical revenue. So as we all know, especially in the neighborhood bar segment, but any type of bar outside of nightclub, as the day goes along, your business transforms. So different guests have different expectations at different hours. More likely than not, you're any neighborhood bar that I've ever known,

The folks that come in for lunch and the folks that come in late night, you know, one, two, three in the morning are different people that are looking for different experiences that want different things. So we have to remember as the day progresses, we run into different problems and have different guests. And that means that as the day goes along, we have unique operational challenges at each section of the day. Another thing that we have that later we get in the night is staff energy.

issues. It's really difficult to constantly be on top of everything when you start your shift at 6 a.m. or 6 p.m. and your shift doesn't until 3 or 4 a.m. and we'll get into that a little bit.

And the other thing that we always have to consider is our late night, how we close affects how we open. So anything late night always has an impact on the next day's operation. It has an impact on our business moving forward.

So let's talk through some things here specifically with late night. And we're to start by talking about this staff energy death spiral. I love talking about things as death spirals, but this is a new one for me. Staff energy death spiral. And so really what this comes down to fundamentally is that when someone, know, your evening bartenders a lot of times come in at 6 p.m. and they're working through clothes that could be

Chris Schneider (02:10.538)
Midnight 1 a.m. 2 a.m. 3 a.m. 4 a.m. 5 a.m. Depending on where you are now if you're getting in those really late nights Probably you have folks come in later than 6, but at least in Indiana Where I am it's very common for bars to stay open till 3 a.m. And for that bartender started 6 and work the whole shift Because it's not quite late enough to make sense to bring in someone else now What does that mean that means that your staff towards the other night? They don't have much energy at 1 2 3 in the morning

And they still have to put out product. They still have to really push to get that late night business through. Now, one of the reasons that can cause them to be off their game later at night is actually when they come in. So you need to make sure that you have your transitions between bartenders down tight. You need to make sure that your daytime bartender is setting up your evening and tonight bartender up for success.

Because if they aren't set up for success and then they're coming in at dinner time, they have to rush through dinner, they're recovering from dinner, they're still not properly set up, you hit late night, well that bartender is never going to be properly effective. So number one thing for your staff energy when it comes to your late night is to make sure they transition in properly at the start of their shift goes well. Another thing you can look at, if you are more like a club, if you do a lot of business, say you're in a college town or something and

Yeah, you do some evening business around dinnertime, say until from 6 to 9. You do pretty well 9 to midnight. But God, one o'clock hits. We get packed.

In that case, maybe you need to look at having a dedicated late night team or having folks that come in later in the night. Well, I never switched bartenders at any of my bars, you know, at night because I them come in at six and work till close. I would bring in things like bar backs at like 10 p.m. on specific nights where I was worried about late night business because I knew that's when I need to have somebody fresh that can get ice, that can get bottles, that can run cakes. And so that's when I brought that person in.

Chris Schneider (04:20.11)
The other thing to look at is, are you giving folks breaks? That sounds weird. I know for a lot of bars and restaurants, breaks are not really something that happens. But when you're asking somebody to do a 8, 9, 10, 11 hour shift, giving them a break is important. And structuring it so that it's not just like, oh, go out back and smoke a cigarette and shove some food in your face and that's called a break. Now give them an actual like 15, 20 minutes to relax, to sit down, to really...

get some rest in their head if that's what they would like to do. Now the second piece, we have staff energy management is our first piece that can screw you up late night. The second piece is talking about your menu. So menu misalignment late night. Now what do I mean when I say menu misalignment? Well, if again, you're a neighborhood bar, probably you have a full menu that runs during dinner and probably you have a late night menu that you're running late night. But does that late night menu actually help you? Is it actually getting

what you need out of your guests and revenue and is it able for your team to prepare it and keep on pace? Right. So much of what we have to worry about when it comes to menus is not are we charging enough for the food? Can we get the food out? That's all critically important. But so much of what we have to look at is does this fit what my guests are looking for?

And so late night, want crowd pleasing items and we want things that are not overly complex. Why not overly complex? Because that's quick to get out of the kitchen. It's easier. It requires less kitchen labor to get out of the kitchen. So you probably don't want to run a full blown dinner menu at 2 a.m. But you probably do want to have chips or fries or a simple sandwich or something available to those folks so that there is something they can order late night that you can get out of the kitchen quickly.

that is crowd pleasing and that's going to get a little bit more money out of your guests. Now, the really two things happen when I see people try to do late night menus that just destroy their ability to be successful with them. The first one is inconsistent availability. If you have a light night menu and it's it's 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. is when your late night menu runs and needs to run 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. every night it's supposed to.

Chris Schneider (06:42.114)
Now, that's just Friday and Saturday. Great. But if you say it's all week long, it needs to be till 2 a.m. every night. You cannot close your kitchen early. Otherwise, people will not do it. So inconsistent availability is, in my opinion, honestly, worse than not even having something. So make sure that if you're doing something, you're doing it consistently. And make sure for your late night crowd that your price points are right. For example.

One of the reasons I have a late night menu is because people are not going to order full blown entrees for a snack when they're drunk late at night. They're going to order fries. They're going to order chips. They're going to an appetizer, something simple, something carb heavy, protein heavy that they can eat that's going to help soak up some of that liquor in their stomach. That also means that they're not going to spend 50, 60, $70 on a full plate of food. Make sure your price points.

fit in with what people want late night, which is basically snacks.

So get that price point in line and make sure it's consistently available.

final note I will say on menu alignment, we've been talking almost entirely about a food as I've talked through that, but you also need to look at it with booze. And when I say look at it with booze, an example comes to mind that's very specific, which is your more mixology based cocktail bars.

Chris Schneider (08:08.846)
If you have, and I've been to these, there are some cocktail bars that get really, really, really busy. And frankly, one and a half minute, two minute drink on the menu, if they make one every once in while, no big deal. But if a bunch of people start ordering the cocktails that are harder to make, that take longer to make, they would fall way behind on the bar, and then you'd be sitting there waiting 15 minutes for your drink, which is, course,

Not going to help me want to go back there and order drinks at that place again late night. So you may want to think about.

changing your menu as your day goes along, not just with your food, but also with your cocktails so that when you're in those high volume rush late night periods, you don't have a bartender sitting there making five mojitos because a mojito is not on the cocktail menu that way. Now, the last piece we need to look at that hurts late night business is

A breakdown in your environment. So when I say environmental breakdown or breakdown in your environment, what I'm talking about is you have an atmosphere. You have a certain thing that you're doing. And sometimes late night that can get distorted. Now, why does that distort? Well, A, people are tired. B, there are more people there throwing things around. It can get messy and you can have people move tables. All this stuff can happen. And you have a different crowd like we talked about before.

So sometimes that environment, that atmosphere that you've worked so hard to craft late night is different than during the day. And you need cohesive concepts always. So you need to figure out how to mitigate that and manage that. So the big thing that I always see late night in bars is cleaning gaps, maintenance gaps. And a lot of times you'll see that in the bathrooms. You'll see paper all over the floor. You'll see

Chris Schneider (10:06.178)
running sinks sometimes you'll see just crap everywhere in bathrooms and they're just a mess late at night and that's not something you want. When you're doing that high volume, you want people that have a great experience. You want to keep your place clean and that's most noticeable always in the bathrooms. So late at night, always make sure you are checking your bathrooms. It's a great thing to have your bar back to every half hour or so. The other thing that you need to think about late night.

when it comes to kind of your facility and your environment is your seating arrangement. So if you have a spot where people are dancing some of the time, but then you use it for seating other time, do you get all those seats out? Do you have an organized way that you are moving those tables every week or every night to generate that change in environment? But also, are you controlling, even if you're not doing that, are you controlling how your guests are pulling tables together?

Right. We've all seen it. Guests come in, they pull a couple tables together, and it's exactly the wrong spot. And it creates all sorts of issues getting around them, serving them, getting through the bar. It can cut off major passive travel. And when guests do that, you need to make them stop. So you have to control your seating and make sure that your seating is arranged in a way that is going to allow guests easy access, easy flow around your bar.

The other thing that frequently happens with kind of the atmosphere and environment late at night, and this is just a matter of packing a lot of people in a small building, you run into temperature control problems. You know, something that happens way more in the bar business than a lot of other businesses, because we have a building that's temperature controlled. You put an extra hundred people in it. It's small. It gets hot quick. And now you have to run the fans in January when it's 20 degrees outside to bring some of that 20 degree air in.

because it's 80 degrees inside even though you started at 68. So make sure you're staying on top of your temperature control and make sure that you are maintaining a temperature that is comfortable for people and not driving them out of your business. The final environmental breakdown that can happen, and this is really not so much environmental like the other things where we're talking about cleaning or where your tables are or the temperature, but your security. Most bars don't have security most of the time.

Chris Schneider (12:29.342)
Many bars have security on Friday and Saturday night and never any other time of the week. So what does that security presence look like? How do they interact with your guests? Have you provided them proper training? Right. Have you gone from a welcoming environment to a non welcoming environment just because your bouncer is a jackass? I've seen that happen. I've accidentally hired people that were not nice and they hurt my environment. It happens. But you need to figure out these critical kind of points.

to understand how you can fix them. So to sum this all up, remember your late night revenue never has to suffer. And if you address your staff energy, your menu alignment, and you manage your environment properly, you can create a vibrant and profitable late night scene that keeps guests coming back.