A mainstay of American dining culture, sports bars offer affordable fare and a gathering spot for fans throughout game day, come rain or shine. These boisterous areas can be profitable businesses, but other restaurant types aren’t obliged to deal with the overhead expenditures of a wall of TVs and all the top cable channels.
If there isn’t a typical sports bar in the area, you might choose to start one from scratch or take a different approach. Maybe you think there is a growing need for e-sports bars there. Your business plan will assist you in defining your goals for the restaurant and outlining a route to success, regardless of the type of sports bar you intend to create.
The Need for a Business Plan for a Sports Bar
A business strategy identifies the distinct market or customer base you hope to attract (that will help pay for all those ESPN networks). How are you going to entice all those sports fans to watch the game at your pub as opposed to lounging on their couches?
The business plan for your sports bar will serve as a crucial roadmap for launching your restaurant and demonstrate to prospective partners and investors that you have a strategy in place to finance and turn a profit on your venture.
How to Create a Business Plan for a Sports Bar
Writing is difficult, particularly when you have to deal with the seemingly endless possibilities of a blank page. Thus, avoid beginning your business plan for a sports bar with a blank page. For useful advice on creating a sports bar business plan and what to do with it once it’s finished, read this article.
A Sports Bar Business Plan’s Components
- Executive Summary
The executive summary, which opens your business plan, should pique readers’ interest in your sports bar and persuade them to continue reading. Your explanations for starting a sports bar and why you did so—why now, in this market?—should take center stage in this section.
Keep the audience engaged as you introduce the main ideas of your company plan. This section should provide an outline of the budget, a clear brand vision, and the basic goals and objectives of your sports bar. This section should also include a description of the customer experience: how will your sports bar offer the right mix of food and ambiance to satisfy patrons?
- Overview of the Company
Together, the executive summary and company overview serve as your business plan’s full lexicon. This part should make it simple for readers to explore your business strategy as it is more practical than eye-catching.
Describe the food, drinks, and services you plan to provide, your financial predictions, the internal organization of your sports bar, and your marketing plan. When creating this section, keep your audience in mind. How can you best convey this information to the partners or investors you hope to attract?
- Team and Management
One of your biggest worries will be staffing your sports bar, from hosts and bartenders to servers, cooks, and managers. Start by explaining to investors how you want to be involved in the management structure of your restaurant: will you be a remote CFO or a hands-on owner/operator?
Make a list of every position you’ll need to fill at the sports bar and include job descriptions with responsibilities and expectations for each one. The management structure of your restaurant should be evident from those descriptions, along with a clear summary of how your staff members are required to treat patrons and one another.
Remember to plan ahead and create job descriptions not only for the positions you need to fill when they open up but also for the positions you will need to hire people for as your business develops and grows. Your sports bar’s staffing requirements will play a significant role in the budgetary planning process, therefore it’s imperative that you provide as much information as possible in this area to ensure the accuracy of your financial forecasts.
- An Example of a Menu
Spinach artichoke dip, burgers, fried cheese, and wings are all common sports bar cuisine. It is likely that this is the direction you will want to take your sports bar menu. However, if you would like to follow a different route in the sports bar industry, such as starting an e-sports bar with ramen service, please share your plans. Your sports bar’s sample menu will determine whether it follows tradition or forges a new route in the industry.
Inform prospective partners and investors on the type of cuisine you plan to make, where you plan to get the ingredients, and most importantly, the labor and machinery required to generate the meal. Highlight regional delicacies or create inventive vegan takes on classic sports bar fare.
Sample menus serve as a guide for numerous other aspects of your business plan, so give them careful thought. After creating a menu sample you are proud of, schedule the time, labor, supplies, and financial outlay necessary to open your business. Later on in your sports bar business plan, these aspects will be expanded upon in the sections dedicated to operations, finances, and market analysis.
- Market Analysis
Even though a sports bar may not be a novel idea, your business can nevertheless make waves in the industry. Maybe your town has never had a sports bar of its own, or maybe everyone complains about the frozen and fried food at the corporate chain restaurant nearby. Alternatively, it just so happens that a bunch of rugby fans might be in the city and without a place to congregate.
The market study demonstrates to prospective investors that you have a clear plan for your sports bar and have identified a successful route for your new venture. Which industry are you going into, why now is the ideal time, and how have you customized your business plan to fit the needs of that market?
- Branded Graphics
Creating logos and fonts that embody your brand’s essence with a designer is one of the most thrilling parts of launching a new company. Customers will recognize your brand from your graphics, so carefully evaluate their design as rebranding can be costly and hazardous.
Your images may appear on takeout boxes or bags, menus, websites, sports bars, and marketing materials. They’re a fantastic method to introduce your business to potential clients. One example is GYM Sportsbar, which has locations in NYC, LA, and Fort Lauderdale.
- Public Relations and Marketing
Developing a marketing and public relations plan for your new sports bar helps demonstrate to potential investors that you have a strategy in place for getting the word out and drawing consumers in. Use this to schedule the big opening of your sports bar, outline special events or loyalty programs, and provide a menu of limited-edition seasonal dishes or brews that are sure to please patrons.
How can you convince your customers to invite their friends when you’ve established a base? The section on marketing and publicity will outline strategies for not just promoting your restaurant but also maintaining its profitability. Events, email marketing, and social media are all excellent places to start.
- Business Operations
In this portion of your business plan, you will be asked to outline your restaurant’s operational strategy, from the macro-level of quarterly financial reports to the micro-level of every client interaction. Create a network diagram of your company’s activities, including how food is delivered to your restaurant from the supply chain, who determines how it is made, and how it is served to customers.
Provide details on how each section of your business plan contributes to the sports bar concept you described in the executive summary. Plan how you’ll put your company’s principles and employee culture into action. Remember also how all these little things come together to make for an experience that is worth coming back for.
- Loans and Finance
Even while a wall of high-definition TVs could draw people into your sports bar, a crucial part of your business plan should be making sure that the expense of all that wattage is compensated for by sales of food and beverages. Include information in this part about how you plan to hire and train new employees, hire or lease space, buy supplies and equipment for opening day, and manage your marketing budget.
If you want to start a coffee roasting business, think about all of your funding possibilities. Credit lines, bank or alternative loans, merchant cash advances, crowdfunding, small business administration (SBA) loans, equipment financing, purchase order financing, and commercial real estate loans are a few of these.
- Estimates of Sales and Operating Costs
It will be much simpler to create a budget, sales projections, and operating expenses because of the attention to detail and care with which you crafted the other components of your business plan. All of the expenses associated with operating a sports bar should be included in this section, including rent, loan payments, supplies, labor, equipment, training, and maintenance.
A break-even analysis, which contrasts the monthly expenses with the sales needed to break even, is frequently included in business plans. Investors will look at the profit and loss statement to gauge the risk of investing in your company, but a profit and loss statement for a startup company needs to be based on some informed guesswork.
A cash flow analysis, which outlines projected expenditures on labor, supplies, and operations, demonstrates to investors that the business can sustain itself without more funding. At the end of each quarter, make sure to take into account how your sport bar’s particular expenses, like cleaning supplies or seasonal staffing costs, balance.
How to Present Your Business Plan for a Sports Bar
There are several strategies to get ready to pitch your company plan to investors and pique their attention. Keep in mind that the tone you use when discussing your company should be appropriate for the circumstances. You should prepare a lengthy presentation for a face-to-face meeting with interested investors, but you should also have a few-minute pitch ready to grab people’s attention. Then, in just 30 seconds, your entire business plan may be summed up in the all-important elevator pitch. Don’t forget to include something interesting or provide an opportunity for questions to keep people talking.
Distribute your business plan to as many possible investors as you can. Asking opens the door to hearing yes (or no!).
You should prepare a more thorough presentation that includes every important component of your company strategy as soon as you have a meeting scheduled with a possible partner or investor. It’s also a good idea to prepare responses for questions you might receive for the first time and to foresee possible queries.
Be sincere and truthful when networking, even if you don’t have an immediate response for every question that is asked of you. Investors will be drawn to your charm and cunning in addition to your capacity to create a thorough plan.