Originally Posted by MDCL

A liquor licence on a university campus is a licence to print money.

The management at the Phoenix would tend to disagree with that notion. As would the management at the Turret, Wilfs and the Wave. And those are the only the ones I know of.

Moreover, the management at Boston Pizza, West End, Charlie West, the Hub, Snooty Fox, Montfort, and London Taphouse would also chime in complaining about the lack of money being brought in by McMaster students.

Originally Posted by lorend

Woohooo props for Compass!

But they make it so we can't sell tickets in the student centre to our events if we want.

Originally Posted by deadpool

Moreover, the management at Boston Pizza, West End, Charlie West, the Hub, Snooty Fox, Montfort, and London Taphouse would also chime in complaining about the lack of money being brought in by McMaster students.

So all these money losing establishments in the vicinity of mac are operating at a loss out of the goodness of their poor poor hearts...well bless them indeed for running a charity for the students in the mac community...paleaze.

He said 'lack of money bring brought in by McMaster Students" not that they are all operating at a loss in general

Originally Posted by micadjems

But they make it so we can't sell tickets in the student centre to our events if we want.

The 5% they charge to sell tickets for student groups amounts to very little money when you apply it to ticket sales. For example, $5000 in sales amounts to only $250 commission for Compass. Those fees are used to help cover the cost of employee wages (more specifically the Internal Coordinators' who are the ones responsible for ticket sales and have a lot of tasks to make sure everything goes smoothly) and to run the service, as Compass' goal is to remain revenue neutral.

So they have a "monopoly" on MUSC so to speak. But if Compass can't cover their cost from commissions (obviously from multiple places and not just event tickets) student fees will increase.

Originally Posted by MDCL

So all these money losing establishments in the vicinity of mac are operating at a loss out of the goodness of their poor poor hearts...well bless them indeed for running a charity for the students in the mac community...paleaze.

It's good to know that you cannot comprehend context and timeframes...

Right now in Hamilton, Mac students are not spending money at bars or restaurants. It's why we see a LOT of things getting cut. At BP, first to go were promos including fishbowl Fridays/Saturday and team pitchers. At the Hub, they are only open like one day a week. At Phoenix, they now close at 12AM. At Snooty Fox, they had to drastically cut down their food quality, in favour of cheapness. London Taphouse has stopped hiring new employees because they have far too many, and the ones who do work there are rarely getting shifts.

So how about that Quarters demolition? Now there's a topic we can all agree on

I like the marmor better.

Originally Posted by deadpool

At BP, first to go were promos including fishbowl Fridays/Saturday and team pitchers.

Fishbowls were gotten rid of because it's illegal to serve someone that much alcohol in one go. That's what a server told me anyway...

So sad.

Originally Posted by deadpool

It's good to know that you cannot comprehend context and timeframes...

Right now in Hamilton, Mac students are not spending money at bars or restaurants..

Lol...you're right...I cannot comprehend this complex issue...

10,000 BC...Tharg surveys the starving villagers and pronounces:

"We must move the village. Though we enjoy the bounty from the cash we harvest from the students, many months go by when we see no students!"

Then it dawns on him!

"There is a pattern to their migration...this animal comes a plenty between September and April. We will harvest a a bit extra for the hard summmers!"

Dude...business plan...if they were unaware the summer would be lean then they shouldn't be in business. Ya make more than enough when the students roam the plains of mac to make it through the hard summer months.

Ya might want to stay away from a future in business deadpool!

Originally Posted by callender

Fishbowls were gotten rid of because it's illegal to serve someone that much alcohol in one go. That's what a server told me anyway...

So sad.

it's only 3 ounces of alcohol, which is the equivalent of a schooner. you can actually still order the exact same thing, but not at a discounted price.

from my sources, the problems with fishbowls were the cost of the glasses themselves, the prevalence of them being stolen or broken, and the fact that people came in for fishbowl fridays and didn't order food (fishbowls having a very slight profit margin in exchange for the belief that people would order high-profit-margin items found on the appetizer menu)

the other thing is, the fishbowl removal is a temporary measure and may see a return to action come september, along with the team pitcher (which was removed SOLELY at the main W B.P.)

actually, i think you might still be able to get fishbowls at the mountain BP, and you can definitely get team pitchers at any other BP in ontario.

Originally Posted by deadpool

the problems with fishbowls were the cost of the glasses themselves, the prevalence of them being stolen or broken [...]

*cough*

Originally Posted by MDCL

Lol...you're right...I cannot comprehend this complex issue...

10,000 BC...Tharg surveys the starving villagers and pronounces:

"We must move the village. Though we enjoy the bounty from the cash we harvest from the students, many months go by when we see no students!"

Then it dawns on him!

"There is a pattern to their migration...this animal comes a plenty between September and April. We will harvest a a bit extra for the hard summmers!"

Dude...business plan...if they were unaware the summer would be lean then they shouldn't be in business. Ya make more than enough when the students roam the plains of mac to make it through the hard summer months.

Ya might want to stay away from a future in business deadpool!

When you buy alcohol as a licensed establishment, you actually pay more per bottle than you would from the LCBO store. These costs spring from the fact that a bar is also paying for its' license through the liquor sales.

A bottle of Smirnoff vodka costs $23 at the LCBO, but would cost a bar around $26 due to the license costs. This means that each ounce of alcohol in a bottle costs around $1 for the bar. Quarters charges $3.25 per ounce of alcohol INCLUDING the marginal cost of the drink used to mix. Basically, with no other costs, Quarters makes around $2.20 a drink. Of course, then if you factor in the cost of wages, ice, utilities, wages, etc. you come to realise that Quarters actually makes mere cents per drink they sell.

This means that Quarters must sell very high volumes of drinks to cover the cost of the bottles, due to the fixed costs. Same with any other bar. This is why we aren't paying the ridiculous $10 a drink that you find for some rail drinks at Hess, or the far worse $20 ones in Toronto.

When you don't get those high volumes, the only way to make money is to sell food, which has a much higher profit margin. Because Quarters is primarily a student service, the food there is relatively cheaper than food in other establishments, leading to a lower profit margin.

In short, Quarters needs high volumes of sales, all day, every day.

Yes, I agree that it should be closed in summer. Never did I say anything contrary to that. But even so, Quarters, and every other bar around here which also needs to have low prices to stay in competition with one another, does not make enough money due to the low volume of students who go to these bars. It's a problem centered around the fact that in the past 5 years there have been fewer students over 19 years old to be found on Campus. At this point in time, the number of 19+ students on campus are at the lowest ever in Ontario.

Now, I suggest YOU don't go into business until you acquire a rudimentary knowledge of economics, demographics, or the intricacies of competition in the business place.

For the record, I have actually seen the Quarters numbers. I have seen how much Quarters has made in a given day, week, month. I actually KNOW what I am talking about when it comes to Quarters, and I also do understand why it is damn near impossible for Quarters to do much more than break even. I resent uninformed people attempting to accuse me of ignorance of the matters as it relates to Quarters. Especially from their computer chair.

One question though Rohan, your calculations there made sense; it does look like Quarters has a mountain to climb even if it wants to break even. And that definitely is made worse by the fact that Quarters is seen mostly as a lower year club while the upper years(who are over 19 and hence able to spend on alcohol, as well as drink alot more then younger kids I suppose) prefer other joints like Hess or CW. In that regards last years loss was slightly out of their hands, they are infact suffering from their own policy as a student friendly club by offering cheaper drinks. I only hope that with the new investment, Quarters gains a trend amongst the upper years and becomes a more "classier" place to go. But the question then is if despite all the investment Quarters fails to break even, then what would you suggest as a possible solution? More Expensive food and drinks? Smaller staff? Or Do have to just wait and see and hope for full houses every thursday(and possibly Saturday?)

The great things about the renovation is that Ian, knowing the problems, worked on cutting down a lot of the costs associated with staffing and alcohol shrinkage. This means that a lot of the fixed day-to-day costs are going to be cut down big time. This gives Quarters a lot more flexibility in terms of volume needing to be sold, making it a lot easier for the place to break even.

Also big things like moving staff to 8 month contracts as opposed to 12 month, and saving the overhead costs for full operations in summer will save over $60,000.

Also, Charlie West is NOT an establishment frequented by upper years. From my experience, it is full of first-year students who seem to take advantage of the CW bouncer's inability to properly calculate their ages.