It’s time to talk about a topic that is near and dear to One Fat Frog: alcohol. One decision that all restaurant entrepreneurs have to make is whether your restaurant should serve alcohol. And if you do serve alcohol, should there be a full bar or just beer and wine?
Some people just expect to drink alcohol if they are eating out. In fact, you generally won’t find the One Fat Frog staff eating anywhere without getting a drank, because we’re raging alcoholics fun people. In some cases, this means a full bar with shots and cocktails in addition to beer and wine. In other cases, it might be best for your restaurant to have a bar that serves beer and wine but no liquor. Or maybe you want to serve bottles of beer out of a cooler but not actually have a bar with any beer on tap. Or maybe your restaurant shouldn’t serve alcohol at all. So how do you decide?
Partly it depends on your theme. If you’re a restaurant that specializes in wings and you want your customers to hang out and eat while they watch sports, you need to have beer at a minimum. If your restaurant is a fine dining restaurant, your customers expect you to have a good wine selection. What if you are a low-cost casual restaurant, like fast food or a sandwich shop? Sometimes those types of restaurants serve beer (generally only from bottles) and sometimes they are non-alcoholic. One factor is how family-friendly your place is. McDonald’s and Chic-fil-A would upset some people if they served alcohol, because with their playgrounds and children’s meals they present a wholesome family image. However, some casual restaurants like Mexican restaurant Chipotle and a great local sandwich shop 903 Mills Market (a favorite of this Frog) do serve beer and make good money doing so. No one goes to those restaurants specifically to drink – and the restaurants’ small beer selection reflects that – but many people like to have a bottle of beer with their meal.
Another thing to remember is licensing. You need a liquor license to serve any kind of alcohol, and it’s a different license with different restrictions and regulations depending on whether you’re beer only, beer and wine, beer wine and liquor, and all of that. The more alcohol your restaurant serves, the more government regulations it faces. So be sure to carefully consider your options when deciding whether your restaurant startup should serve alcohol. And if you do, can you swing by the One Fat Frog office and bring me some?