Jay in the LDN

Not too long ago I entered in to a business venture with a few guys who I had worked with for quite a while. The venture was quite a unique on being that we came into full control of the business which we worked for!

If I said that I trusted these people 100% then I would be lying. Sure I liked them all but I never ‘really’ knew them…But I was excited to own a business in an industry that I was and still am very passionate about. I think if I am honest with myself then I think I knew that it wasn’t going to be all fun and games. I was up for the hard graft and if times were to get hard then I was willing to tackle that head on.

In order to make the business our own and personalize it a little, we closed our venue for a week and we all chipped in with re-painting and fixing up what was now ours, we wanted a venue to be proud of you know.

Once we re-opened there was a buzz about the place, we kept the same ethos as we had before and we managed to keep hold of our original client base which was so important to us, well to me at least because as a cocktail bar you are kind of defined by the people who frequent there and we had an brilliant bunch which came back night after night after night!

Things were going well, really well for us. We were having weekly P&L meetings, we hired an accountant with whom we had weekly meetings with and the business started making money, something which it had never done before. Every body was given certain responsibilities in order to give our business stability and some structure and everybody was happy to be living the dream!!

Problems started occurring when certain people started getting above their stations. As we were all friends, some people took criticism too personally. Others thought that if they didn’t do their job to the best of their ability then that was fine and it wouldn’t be damaging to our set up. Cracks started to show and before long things became tense between certain team members. Our weekly P&L meetings were now every two to three weeks, new people were hired to do the jobs that some original team members couldn’t be bothered to do which made things even worse. Through all this, no one said a word. We each voiced our opinions to the people we were closest to but all this did was create groups within the team.

Our busiest time of the year came upon us which seemed to make all of our problems disappear but all it really did was shadow them for a while. Throughout Christmas we had a lot of money coming in to the business which eased certain stresses. Our usual busy nights were Thursdays, Friday and Saturdays but with the run up to Christmas we were fully booked most nights of the week. As happy as we were with all the money coming in, we knew this would not really sit us in profit but only compensate for the dry period that was going to be January and February. These months are usually the quietest but with the current economic climate they were set to be quieter still. We were ready for that…We weren’t ready for what actually happened!

When we took over the business, it was signed over from a ‘friend’ so we stupidly assumed everything was cool, like you would. Not the case at all!! We had a visit from Westminster Council on January 9th, They demanded that we cease trading and close the bar immediately. Turns out we didn’t have a license to sell alcohol. We had applied to change the names on our license which sent up a flag on their computers. How can you change a name on a license which doesn’t exist right?! The business was signed over to us just as our ‘friends’ license had expired and he failed to tell us this. This means that we had been trading for five and a half months without an alcohol license in the West End! We were threatened with court action, heavy fines and imprisonment. We stated our case to Westminster Council and cooperated fully. They were lenient and told us that we could apply for a new license and pay a fine of 6k…believe me we got off very very lightly! Licenses take a long time to process which means that we had to remain closed for some time. Whilst we were closed we still had to try and pay our landlord his rent for the venue which was crazy expensive as you can imagine for a venue in Soho. Most team members couldn’t afford to wait around for the venue to reopen which was understandable so they moved on to other things. We soon ran out of money and stared accruing debt with our landlord and also in business rates. The landlord initially trusted that he would get his money at some point so allowed us to continue. Week after week the license never came and our landlord became increasingly frustrated. As would you if you were £2,300 a week out of pocket!

Meetings were held on a number of occasions between us and our landlord then between our landlord and our accountant and ourselves and our accountant. There was no way of getting round that we owed the landlord £16,000. I had an idea to offer the landlord a percentage of the business in exchange for him allowing us to continue on the lease and all he would have to do is lower the rent by £300 a week. At first he went for it and it seemed like we would be able to re-open as soon as the license came through. We had a few ‘closed door’ ‘bring your own bottle’ parties so people would keep us in their minds. Everyone was positive until Westminster Council gave us a list of 23 things which we had to promise to do in order to grant us a license. This meant it was going to take another 4 weeks for our license to be processed and we would have to do these things which did not suite the venue! That’s another 4 weeks at £2000 a week!! Now we had to offer the landlord a bigger chunk of what was ours…not good times but we didn’t want to lose our business! The landlord grew more and more impatient, I would too to be honest, and he told us that he had several offers for the lease of the venue. In the end folks we had to call it a day. We closed the business…we had too…and if only we were told that the venues license had expired on day one then we would still be partying today!

Our aim was to create an industry leading bar and what is most frustrating is that we were well on our way in making that dream a reality.

My advise to you is to never go in to business with people that you don’t trust 101%!

If you have a stake in something, don’t be scared to open your mouth and voice your opinions.

Make sure that you are on the same page as you partner/partners before you venture in to anything which involves you financially…business is all about the Benjamins remember!  

And Like my man James Dean said “Dream as if you`ll live forever. Live as if you`ll die tomorrow”.