Thinking of opening up a soft drink bar

Successful

Owes the Caf £25 (With interests)
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Dec 15, 2006
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I got this idea a few days ago, thinking why not open up a bar where people can enjoy an alternative to alcoholic beverage.

What I would like to offer is drinks served at a perfect suited temperature in a spotless crystal glas. Only the biggest and most known brands in the world would be served such as Coca cola, Fanta, Sprite etc, and for those who enjoy water I would like to offer a huge variety of water brands from Nestlé to Evian.

My price list would be generous. I know people are fed up with paying 4-5 euro per pint so I would aim to let my sodas go for no more than €3,50.

I'm thinking opening this in Dublin might be a good choice since I have been there twice and seen people tend to drink quite a bit. The city is small enough to establish a brand, yet big enough to offer a good base of potential customers. The economic situation in Ireland is also giving an entrepreneur like myself a golden opportunity to penetrate the market seeing prices for leasing a place is on the way down.

I'm just curious to know what people in general would prefer - tap or bottle? The water might have to be in the original bottle to ensure the customer they're getting the real deal, but the Cola might look luxury coming out of a tap.

I'm thinking people are coming in there asking for a refreshing drink. They ask for a cola and I am able to offer them four different types: the original, the light, the zero and the vanilla flavour.

I might also add a speciality as DrPepper, but I don't want the offer to get too unstructured so to begin with I might stay with the absolutely biggest and most known brands to secure a steady income.

I'm feeling confident and willing to go for it. Chances like these don't come often.
 
Can we have another 5 year plan diagram please. Also I think chances like these don't come often, because noone wants to take a chance on a soft drink bar.
 
Never been to Dublin, but I'm going to assume the drinking culture over there is exclusive to alcohol and not soft drinks/water.

What chance? Have you come into some money recently?
 
Be careful, this could be the work of the Illuminati again.
 
So really you want a fancy one of these
sodamachine.jpg



All i'm going to say is it would be a quick way to go broke. There is a reason that restaurants fight tooth and nail for liquor licenses and its not because they can't sell soft drink.
 
What's your projected first year turnover? How much are you looking for me to invest and at what equity?
 
Successful said:
A 5 year plan diagram? I don't have anything ready at the moment but I guess I could produce that if people here are interested in the building up of my business - why not.
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So you don't even have a business plan? You're skating on thin ice here pally, I suggest you come up with the numbers fast.
 
You're clientele should be kids under drinking age. A bar for kids. No grown man is going to go to a soft drink bar. Even if you want a soft drink, you can just go to a proper bar and have one along with nibbles and the rest of your friends can have their alcohol.
 
Successful said:
A 5 year plan diagram? I don't have anything ready at the moment but I guess I could produce that if people here are interested in the building up of my business - why not.
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You dont have a business plan? Have you never seen dragons den before?
 
Sorry but you come to us with no business plan and no numbers at all, for that reason I am also out.
 
kps88 said:
I'm out.
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The revelation that Successful has no business plan has already caused one Dragon to declare themselves out. How will Successful respond to the others Dragons' questions from here? A tense moment for the would-be bar owner.
 
As soon as I read "soft drink bar", I thought of novelty flavours, not just the stock standard Coca Cola/PepsiCo drinks. If you're definitely serious about the idea, and the finances are sound, then at least you should shoot for some specialty to begin with, as I wouldn't go out of my way just to get a soft drink I can pick up at the supermarket and stick in the fridge.
 
Sounds like a bad idea with the focus on health, overweight etc these days. People dont want to chug down soft drinks, especially in a city like Dublin where Id guess theres already a big market for beer, which kinda fills a lot of the "having a drink I know is unhealthy but I do it anyway" niche for most people.

I can see a place selling smoothies, assorted ice tea or something else with a more "healthy but still refreshing" vibe being a lot more successful than a soft drink bar.

And how is Cola from the tap "luxury"? Every McDonalds has that and its the least luxurious drink I can think of..

How come you have the chance of opening a bar btw? Lot of money suddenly come your way?
 
iSparky said:
Sorry but you come to us with no business plan and no numbers at all, for that reason I am also out.
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Another Dragon is out and with Successful becoming less forthcoming with the finances of his investment, Duncan's patience has begun to wain.
 
Annihilate Now! said:
What are your projected first year costs?
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It depends on the location. There are old pubs up for sale where I could host my business. Another alternative would be to go a bit more posh, I'm thinking the top of a building New York style. A bit like the celebrities prefer to hang out.

dublin_ireland.jpg
 
You've come here with an idea, a bad idea at that. No one on this Earth would ever consider going to this bar. It's a glorified vending machine and if I wanted to, I could put one on every street corner, it's not unique. What's to stop sweatshops in China knocking these out? Absolutely nothing. And what's worse is you don't even have a business plan or any idea how much you want me to invest. For those reasons, I'm out. I suggest you get your head out of the clouds and stop wasting your time on this idea because it's never going to work.
 
Alright i'm out. If you want to see how to do a proper job with a limited idea like this, look at Max Brenner. Even the business creator was not silly enough to focus solely on serving hot chocolate. If you want to be successful you have to offer the customer something they don't already have and your business idea is not strong enough to work on its own.
 
For what it's worth:

1. You can't charge for water from a tap unless you add value to it. It's free, by law (or it is in the UK at least, I don't know about Ireland).

2. Coca-cola is far more luxurious coming out of a glass bottle. Tap is made from syrup, it doesn't taste the same and to keep the quality high you would have to regularly clean the pipes and vat, which would add to your operating costs.

3. You aren't offering anything anyone can't get from a Cafe or a regular bar. The quality may be higher but the problem is when people go out to drink, they go out to drink alcohol. This is a very niche idea, you would have to add an incentive for people to actually come in.
 
What a terrible idea.

Kids who want a glass of fanta would rather go to Mcdonalds because of their superior advertising.

Adults will go to the pub, even if they don't want alcohol.

Your friends will take a longer route to their destination so they don't have to come in for a pity drink.

If you really fancy opening a niché shop, just do something for which there actually is demand. Bubble tea perhaps? Hell, just walk around Dublin and do some market research.
 
The best way if you want to keep to your original idea is to allow people to bring their own alcohol but have a diverse choice of soft drinks to choose from. ie not the brands they know, you want to be getting strange flavours that will give people a reason to come and get that soft drink to add to their alcohol.
 
Oh and before you decide what price you want to sell your product at, you first have to look at how much it's going to cost you to serve it. If you want your brand to be luxury, you're going to be have to spend a lot on the product and the price is going to be higher as a result. Only then can you decide what sort of margin you want.
 
JezChan said:
As soon as I read "soft drink bar", I thought of novelty flavours, not just the stock standard Coca Cola/PepsiCo drinks. If you're definitely serious about the idea, and the finances are sound, then at least you should shoot for some specialty to begin with, as I wouldn't go out of my way just to get a soft drink I can pick up at the supermarket and stick in the fridge.
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Agree. Not being a drinker myself, I thought it sounded a great idea - but I would expect to see soft drinks from around the world, plus fresh fruit juices.
 
Is Coke a luxury drink now? We even have it in Wales. Still waiting for tap water though.
 
Of course really if you are going to focus on soft drinks yes offer the well known brands but you have to put a big focus on lesser known brands, things people can't find everyplace else but are very good.


But still overall, not sure a "Softdrink Bar" is going to be a winner.

I don't think anyone has every said to me "Let's go out for a soft drink" or "I wish there was a place you could go and hang out that only served soft drinks"
 
JezChan said:
As soon as I read "soft drink bar", I thought of novelty flavours, not just the stock standard Coca Cola/PepsiCo drinks. If you're definitely serious about the idea, and the finances are sound, then at least you should shoot for some specialty to begin with, as I wouldn't go out of my way just to get a soft drink I can pick up at the supermarket and stick in the fridge.
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This, there's no point only offering drinks you can get in a bar that serves alcohol as well. The only way I can see people going to this soft drink bar is if you fill it with random drinks no ones ever heard of but might want to try, throw a few bean bags on the floor and turn it into some hipster Mecca.
 
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