Pub Profitability – How to Ensure Profit for Your Pub

Owning a pub is a dream to many, but ensuring pub profitability is no easy feat.

From the ancient 900 A.D. Seán’s Bar in Westmeath, Ireland to the modern pub, beer has always been a staple for the world.

The good news is that our love for a tasty beer isn’t going away anytime soon.

But does it mean the pub profit is always high?

Well, with rising rents and labor costs, the picture isn’t as rosy as it might seem.

If you own a pub, balancing the books must be one of your top priorities.

Recent reports suggest that Brits are spending less on pubs and are cutting back on eating out, which complicates matters.

Regardless of how complicated the picture is, we are here to simplify it for you.

We’ll give you some surefire tips to make your pub profitable and make it thrive in a competitive market.

How to ensure profitability for your pub

1. Play the right tunes
2. Include happy hours
3. Control waste and losses
4. Use performance-based marketing
5. Don’t take loans
6. Make your pub highly profitable with Bloc

1. Play the right tunes

It might sound a bit surprising, but music has a huge impact on pub profit.

Majority of the customers expect your pub to offer nice music.

In fact, 91% wouldn’t even bother returning if there was no music.

This is what successful establishments in the pub sector fully understand.

Research shows that pubs that offer music far outperform pubs that don’t.

These trends then translate into real numbers, with pubs playing music earning £306 more per day, and £667 more on weekends.

Professor Nicolas Gueguen, known for his research on environmental music and beer drinking, established that when music was played at 88db, people spent 11.5 minutes on a 250ml glass.

On the contrary, at 72db, they finished the same 250ml glass in 14.5 minutes.

This is a major difference and can be a great tool to keep people in your pub for longer periods.

2. Include happy hours

While happy hours isn’t an entirely new concept, the way you design it can make all the difference to pub profitability.

Offering a plain, standard discount doesn’t cut it, especially when you want to make profits.

After all, it’ll only increase the beverage cost for you.

So, instead of the traditional happy hour with a discount, you can offer additional value to customers.

Here a few tips that can help you do that:

Don’t reduce the price of a drink without increasing the price of another. The other drink should be your bestseller, as people are willing to pay more for it.
Design new, creative menus with packaged deals. You can pair low-priced drinks with those that offer high margins. You can also offer food and drink pairings to generate more sales.
Focus on your regular customers and design menus for them, as they are the goldmine that generates most of your sales.
Train your servers to upsell various combos that are more profitable for you.
If you are situated near a winery, take advantage of your location and display their products. You can also invite the winery owners to promote their items.

3. Control waste and losses

With pubs closing down due to exceeding costs, it is more important than ever to control losses and waste in your pub.

The good news is that you don’t need to introduce any complicated system to curb losses and increase pub profit.

What you do need is to work smarter with the resources you already have.

Following are some tips you can deploy to control waste and losses:

Conduct inventory audits at regular intervals. Choose a quiet team for the audits, and preferably use software.
Organise items in different categories: vodka bottles in one place and mixers at another. Also, use clear labels with names, purchase, and expiry dates.
Use inventory management software with mobile support, real-time updates, and detailed analysis. Train your staff so that they know how to use the system.

4. Use performance-based marketing

Marketing is often thrown around as the magic pill that can change the fortunes of a business.

But what kind of marketing and advertising is more effective to increase pub profit?

The answer is performance-based marketing, which ensures that your business only pays for real, verified customers.

Here is how this pub technology works:

Hyper-local targeting means ads are seen only by customers within a certain radius. This can range from a few kilometers to miles.
With check-in tracking, you are charged only when a customer arrives. It means no extra charges for customers that might not even visit you.
Real-time push notifications to customers ensure that they get informed about the latest deals at your pub. If they are around, they are likely to visit you and increase foot traffic.

Using performance-based marketing cuts ads waste, reduces costs, and spends resources where they are most likely to bring more revenues.

5. Don’t take loans

The idea of controlling your finances goes way beyond managing inventory.

It is also about managing your finances in a way that you don’t have to take loans.

After all, you’ll have to pay interest on them.

Given the current condition of the pub market, it certainly isn’t wise to pick a loan with unfavourable interest terms.

Even if you have to take out a loan, invoice finance or a loan with small interest fees is a much better idea.

6. Make your pub highly profitable with Bloc

Many pubs are struggling all across the UK, and some are even shutting down.

But you don’t have to be one of them. With the right marketing tools, you can stay ahead of the curve, gain more customers, and boost pub profit.

This is where Bloc comes in with its next-gen advertising.

No more guessing which ads work, no more wasted budgets on empty clicks.

Instead, you get hyper-targeted promotions, guaranteed foot traffic, and measurable ROI with advanced analytics.

The best part?

You get all of this at affordable prices.

Ready to turn local visibility into real profits?

Try our platform risk-free with £150 in ad credit, which means 75 potential customers.

Visit our website today and sign up.