Are you ready to glimpse the future? Tune in for an enlightening conversation about the upcoming 2024 bar industry trends. We're talking martini resurgence, the potential rum comeback, and the need for innovative ingredients. It's clear that flexibility and a focus on local communities will be key for bars in the post-COVID era. And, for those who appreciate a good drink, but not necessarily the buzz, we're discussing the rise of low-alcohol and non-alcoholic beverages, sober months, and the emergence of wine-based cocktails.
The future of the bar business isn't all about the drinks though. We're chatting about the growing popularity of small plates and the need for more frequent menu changes. We also cover price sensitivity in the hospitality industry and the growing trend of house-made items—everything from salad dressings to non-alcoholic beverages. In this changing landscape, it's all about providing fantastic experiences at fair prices, and we'll discuss how bars can adapt to meet these challenges.
But we're not stopping there. We're delving into the broader industry and tech trends that could shape 2024 in unexpected ways. Will late-night activities decline amidst a cultural shift and increasing safety concerns? Is tech in the front of the house a thing of the past, or will it find a new home in the back of the house? If you're interested in what the future holds for the bar industry, you won't want to miss out on this episode.
##### Welcome to the Bar Business Podcast, the ultimate resource for bar owners looking to elevate their businesses to the next level. Our podcast is packed with valuable insights, expert advice, and inspiring stories from successful bar owners and industry professionals. Tune in to learn everything from how to craft the perfect cocktail menu to how to manage your staff effectively. Our mission is to help you thrive in the competitive bar industry and achieve your business goals.
Special thank you to our benchmarking data partner Starfish. Starfish works with your bookkeeping software by using AI to help you make smart data-driven decisions and maximize your profits while giving you benchmarking data to understand how you compare to the industry at large.
Are you ready to glimpse the future? Tune in for an enlightening conversation about the upcoming 2024 bar industry trends. We're talking martini resurgence, the potential rum comeback, and the need for innovative ingredients. It's clear that flexibility and a focus on local communities will be key for bars in the post-COVID era. And, for those who appreciate a good drink, but not necessarily the buzz, we're discussing the rise of low-alcohol and non-alcoholic beverages, sober months, and the emergence of wine-based cocktails.
The future of the bar business isn't all about the drinks though. We're chatting about the growing popularity of small plates and the need for more frequent menu changes. We also cover price sensitivity in the hospitality industry and the growing trend of house-made items—everything from salad dressings to non-alcoholic beverages. In this changing landscape, it's all about providing fantastic experiences at fair prices, and we'll discuss how bars can adapt to meet these challenges.
But we're not stopping there. We're delving into the broader industry and tech trends that could shape 2024 in unexpected ways. Will late-night activities decline amidst a cultural shift and increasing safety concerns? Is tech in the front of the house a thing of the past, or will it find a new home in the back of the house? If you're interested in what the future holds for the bar industry, you won't want to miss out on this episode.
##### Welcome to the Bar Business Podcast, the ultimate resource for bar owners looking to elevate their businesses to the next level. Our podcast is packed with valuable insights, expert advice, and inspiring stories from successful bar owners and industry professionals. Tune in to learn everything from how to craft the perfect cocktail menu to how to manage your staff effectively. Our mission is to help you thrive in the competitive bar industry and achieve your business goals.
Special thank you to our benchmarking data partner Starfish. Starfish works with your bookkeeping software by using AI to help you make smart data-driven decisions and maximize your profits while giving you benchmarking data to understand how you compare to the industry at large.
You're listening to the Bar Business Podcast where every week, your host, chris Schneider, brings you information, strategies and news on the bar industry, giving you the competitive edge you need to start working on your bar rather than in your bar.
Chris Schneider:
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of the Bar Business Podcast. Today, we are going to be talking all about 2024 trends. A few weeks ago, we discussed things that you, as a bar owner or manager, need to do to prepare your bar for the end of the year, but today it's more about things that are changing in the industry, trends that are going on what I see as being the big things over the horizon for 2024, what I see as being less important in 2024. Now, with that said, I do a bunch of research. I talk to a lot of people. All of this, though, is a guess, so we will have the fun opportunity, a year from now, to look back and say, okay, of the predictions, where were we right, where were we wrong, because I'm sure on some of this, I'm going to be terribly wrong, but on most of this, hopefully, I have the trends right. So we're going to talk about the trends I see coming out for 2024 in four major categories cocktails and bar food, general industry trends and then technology. But before we dive into the specifics, let's talk about just kind of bringing it up and, broadly, overall, what seems to be going on in the industry as we go into 2024.
Chris Schneider:
One thing is that we've learned in the last few years that change is required to succeed. You have to make quick menu changes, you have to make quick service adjustments, you have to roll with the times, you have to be nimble. So in 2024, I think one of the big things that we need to be prepared for is to be flexible, to be able to pivot and to be able to change our business based upon the data that we have. In order to do that, obviously, we need to embrace continuous improvement. We've talked about that plenty of times, but continuous improvement and being nimble, being flexible, will be key to success in 2024. The other big trend I see is that we're moving more even more so towards local and community. If we're talking small bars, they've always been neighborhood watering holes. I always talk about the importance of community, but I feel like post COVID is people are getting out and when I interact with people in public and get a feel for why they're going out, what they're doing, that local is more important now than it was before COVID, because we all feel a little bit closer. We all feel a little bit more connected at the local level because essentially, we were trapped at the local level during COVID. So I think a focus on local will continue. Now that could be in the beverages that you serve, whether you're local distillers, local brewers, things like that. That could be in the food If you're getting food from local farms, local growers, local meat sources. But local I see continuing to be a big push in the industry, as it has been for years.
Chris Schneider:
As we get into our four main topics here and sections, let's start with cocktails and bars. Obviously, this is the Bar Business Podcast, so with cocktails and bars, there are four. Well, really three big things I see on the horizon. One is we're going to see more innovative ingredients. If you look at what was crazy mixology a few years ago, a lot of that has come down into the neighborhood bar dive bar level and has hit everything in between and, part of that, different ingredients. I feel like we're going to get back to a place where we start mixing more global flavors. So for those of you that were around and in fine dining and say late 90s, early 2000s, fusion was hot. Everything was about how can I fuse global flavors together and we got away from that a little bit, but I feel like that will be a big trend with our food and especially when it comes to things that again used to be high end, that are not now as high end. So think of things like a finishing spray on a cocktail where you're spritzing it with a water or oil based compound that is going to give certain esters, certain flavors to that drink that you wouldn't otherwise have. You can go pretty exotic with those, you can have a lot of fun with those, and I feel like we're going to see things like that creep more into the lower end of the bar scene from just where it was previously in the crazy mixology high end cocktail bars.
Chris Schneider:
The second major trend I'm expecting to see in cocktails and behind the bar is martinis. There has been a lot of push in the last six months or so behind martinis and it seems like martinis are going to be kind of the it cocktail and along with that it would mean that we're moving back towards clear liquor and away from brown liquor. For years it's been bourbon and whiskey have been the big driving drinks in old fashions and Manhattan's and all these things have this big resurgence. It looks like it's going to be vodka's chance to shine Now, whether that comes out in high end classic vodka cocktails and different types of martinis that are elegant, that are great, or whether we go back to what happened a little over a decade ago, when we started pushing into a lot of flavored vokas and the flavored vodka thing just got over the top crazy, with brands having 20, 30, 40 flavored vokas. We will see. But martinis are definitely going to be the cocktail of the year, and when I say that, not just traditional martinis, a whole bunch of different, take some martinis. But I think we are going to see, along with that, a push towards clear liquor, away from brown and vodka, will be the big thing I'm interested to see. I think rum has a chance to make a resurgence here and really gain some popularity, but we will see. It depends on where people go with rum cocktails and if martinis are things rum really doesn't fit in. But there definitely seems to be some industry momentum behind rum that there has not been in the last few years.
Chris Schneider:
The third trend I see behind the bar coming up big in 2024 is an increasing number of low alcohol drinks and non-alcoholic drinks. It's amazing how many people I know that are beer brewers, that are longtime bartenders, that are bar owners, that are managers that either. Well, almost no one drinks as much as they did in the industry 10 years ago, but a lot of folks do. Sober January, they go for a month, whatever month that is, without drinking. A lot of folks are really getting into the low alcohol or non-alcoholic drinks and mocktails and things. So when you see it coming from within the industry itself and industry people buying into it, when historically bar industry folks are some of the biggest drinkers out there, you know that we have a really staying trend Along with the non-alcoholic, low alcoholic drinks.
Chris Schneider:
There are a few things that I really expect to see. I don't think Seltzer is going to have quite the same momentum that it's had, but I don't think it's going to lose market share. So Seltzer is a great product category that has had huge growth and obviously just before COVID and into COVID it really popped off. I don't see it going away, but what I do see is it not growing as much. But I think Seltzer is here to stay. When it comes to other low alcohol drinks, I think wine now I know wine is not particularly low alcohol but wine, I feel like, is going to experience growth, where beer I don't think we're going to have that same growth.
Chris Schneider:
There's a lot of push towards wine and I think we're going to see more wine and beer based cocktails, things like Spritzers, mimosas because those allow for creative experience, those allow for someone to be very particular with how they put together different flavors and you can do a lot of things with beer and wine cocktails that you can do with liquor cocktails at a much lower ABV. So I think part of this trend towards non-alcoholic and low alcohol drinks, it's incumbent upon the folks in the industry to provide different, interesting ways to interact with things like wine, like a Mimosa. I mean, I'm sure most of you are aware, but you can make Mimosas out of any juice, any herbs you want to add in. There is a lot, a lot of variation that can happen there, and so it's going to be a low alcohol cocktail focus in that I feel like we're going to see more and more and more where we have cocktails based on Spritzers, cocktails based on wine, cocktails based on beer, the other thing with the low and no alcohol, obviously, mocktails. That is something that's here to stay. I feel like We'll see how it adjusts over time.
Chris Schneider:
I'm not super convinced that all the non-alcoholic liquor will stick around. I think we'll see more play with, like I said, spritzers wine. Now obviously that has alcohol in it, but then you look at something like hop water. So hop water is something that's been popping up across different breweries, where they're just adding hops into water, and some of them do it in a heat-based kind of like make hop tea. Some of them do it in more of a dry hopping way where it's kind of just infused into the water. But hop water is going to be a place that gives us a base to build mocktails off of that are different. Hop water is also a place where we're getting a local product from a local brewery, so it works to that local trend as well. But whether it's hop water mocktails, I think we're going to see more non-alcoholic options coming out of local breweries, local distilleries, as they take that on more, because there's absolutely a trend in that way.
Chris Schneider:
Now, one thing that's great about this trend is if you look at breweries that are selling hop water, if you look at bars that have strong mocktail programs folks are not terribly price sensitive on this stuff. You can charge basically the same for a mocktail as a real cocktail. You can charge basically the same for a hop water or, if you do, you can do some great things with house-made sodas and different infusions of flavor to produce a really cool soda product. But the bottom line is you can also charge for these. So it's not like you have to sacrifice your profitability to go non-alcoholic. It's not like you have to sacrifice your revenue to have some low alcohol-based cocktails. The low alcohol, non-alcoholic segment is willing to spend just as much as the alcohol segment of our business and I think that will be a continuing trend. Going out to a bar and having one friend order a martini for 10 bucks and another friend order a non-alcoholic mocktail for eight bucks is not going to be unusual and I think we need to play into that. So it's not price sensitive. But we're gonna see more low alcohol and non-alcoholic things going on, I predict, in 2024.
Chris Schneider:
Now, moving from our cocktails in our bar to our food, I think there are a few key things we're gonna see when it comes to food, the first one being small plates. Small plates have come up in popularity, gone down. They've kind of gone in different places, but I think we're gonna see small plates continue to grow for a few reasons. One is when we look at a lot of the social media trends on food. There's a lot of focus on bites and small plates and eating it non-normal times. Small plates are great because they work in any day part. It's not kind of restricted to lunch or restricted to dinner. You can have small plates at three in the afternoon and it makes sense. So that's kind of top of small plate food, I think is going to continue to grow and be hot. We'll see if it gets as hot as it was, oh, 15 years ago when it really kind of took off. But I think we see more of that. The other great thing about small plates is it hits on.
Chris Schneider:
The second trend I see for 2024 when it comes to food is menus that change more frequently. So because we're looking at more local ingredients, because we're looking at costs, because we're dealing with inflation having to swap things out and modify our menus on a regular basis to provide our customers with good value we're going to see those menus change more frequently. And I've always been a huge fan of seasonal menus and I think that's where we're going to see a lot of bars and restaurants that previously did not do menu changes seasonally move to seasonal. I think some folks that are used to doing things seasonal will see switched to monthly. There is even a larger push behind menus that change weekly, daily, kind of based on what's available, based on what's going on that week, which can work really well and allows you to do a much shorter menu, which keeps your inventory down, which keeps your food costs down and makes everything a lot easier to control. So we'll see where things go with that exactly.
Chris Schneider:
But I definitely think small plates we're going to continue to see grow. Shareable food we'll see continue to grow increase in food sales on day, parts that are not the center of dinner, the main stretch of lunch. Obviously those will always be the busiest, but I think we're going to see more pushing earlier in, kind of in that space between lunch and dinner, happy hour and then maybe some more late night, and I think small plates are kind of going to be the thing. The other trend I'm seeing in food as we go into 2024 is a decrease in vegan and vegetarian specific brands but an increase in vegan and vegetarian offerings at non vegan specific brands. If you think about the last few years, there was a huge push towards vegan restaurants, plant only restaurants, meatless restaurants and those kind of spiked and have been dying off. There's not a lot of volume going on in that I shouldn't say volume. There's not a lot of growth going on in that segment right now and a lot of restaurants that looked very promising have backed off their growth projections and all sorts of things.
Chris Schneider:
Part of that is, I feel like a vegan or vegetarian specific restaurant becomes a little harder because your vegans and vegetarians make up less than 50% of the population and I don't know the exact numbers off the top of my head, but it's something like 20, 25%, if that. Even it might be less. So you're limiting your market to a very small group. But what we have seen is, with the growth in the vegan restaurants, everyone else trying to combat that started off for more vegan and vegetarian items on their normal menus. Well, we're going to continue to see a growth in that. A because people are buying them, people want them, and B because it allows for vegan and vegetarian people to go out with other folks to a normal restaurant and have a great meal and it's a way that it makes sure that there's no specific group that feels left out, where, if you have a vegan only restaurant or a restaurant without anything vegan. You're leaving out a group. What I expect to see in 2024 is a growth in the number of vegetarian and vegan offerings across the board at all restaurants and a decrease in vegan specific or vegetarian specific restaurants.
Chris Schneider:
The other thing that I will say when it comes to the vegan vegetarian thing, I think fake meat kind of had its time and, for whatever reason, the idea of eating vegetable meat with beet blood doesn't particularly appeal to people that would rather just eat meat and I don't think it particularly appeals to the vegan vegetarian group either. I mean, obviously it gives some more variety. It does allow for some different things to do as far as making menus and kitchen offerings and things of that nature. It opens up some techniques and ideas for vegetarian and vegan food that wasn't there before. But I don't see fake meat really being a thing. I really don't. So I think we're going to see a decline in the fake meat segment, whether that's burgers, hot dogs, whatever. Some plant-based will obviously still remain. But in general, I feel like the vegan and vegetarian food we're going to see that increases is going to be based on really good vegan and vegetarian recipes, not copying meat with some fake stuff, because I feel like people don't like fake stuff. Maybe I'm wrong.
Chris Schneider:
Now, once we get past food, let's talk some general industry trends that I predict will impact all of us in 2024. The first one is more focus on the guest experience and personalization. I think we've all seen that post-COVID folks really want to have great experiences. Especially as money gets tight when they're spending their money, they want to have a great and unique experience. So we're going to see more focus on that. It's not going to be good enough to survive to have average service. You have to have phenomenal service, great service. You have to have the ability for folks to kind of personalize their experience at your bar. Now, that gets a little bit difficult, but some of that can just be offering trivia one night a week. You know some weekly events that speak to different groups of people, specials that speak to different groups of people. But however you try to embody that trend, people want to personalize and to really focus on experience. What that comes down to is you have to have great training and we've talked about training before but you need to make sure that steps of service are solidified, that everyone's getting a great experience, that all the guests are getting great interaction, because that focus on guest experience I think is going to be a determining factor in who does really well in the upcoming year and who does not do as well in the upcoming year.
Chris Schneider:
And the reason why I fear that a lot of folks won't do as well in the upcoming year is our guests are going to keep being price sensitive. If you look at any of the polling data and there's plenty of polling data, because we're in a presidential election cycle, which we won't get into. But the US market one thing that you see in all the data that's coming out is that people don't feel great about the economy and while unemployment is low and there's been some wage growth in relation to the inflation, people don't feel good about the economy. So there are some good things People still have money but also we've seen credit card debt skyrocketed. Savings rates have gone down since COVID, so there's some overspending. There's some tightening of belts. People are going to be price sensitive.
Chris Schneider:
Now, because they're price sensitive, that guest experience becomes important, like we just talked about. But also the thing to think about is weekly events. You have to drive people into your business. People are not going to just throw around money when they have an overall negative view of the economy. So, because our guests are price sensitive, we need to find innovative ways with our food, with our cocktails, with everything we're doing to offer killer experiences at a very fair value. Now notice I didn't say a low price, because we shouldn't do it at a low price, but at a fair value. We need to exceed people's expectations for what they're spending and that can be done in a lot of different ways. That can be done in little touches on cocktails, that can be done in service, that can be done in food. That can be done in so many different ways. But when folks are price sensitive, you have to give them a very strong reason to come in and spend money with you, and I don't think the price sensitivity that we're seeing now among guests is going away any time. Next year We'll see what the economy does and how the public view of the economy is, but right now it is not good and it probably will stay that way for a while until inflation gets under control and we start seeing interest rates back down and things like that.
Chris Schneider:
The other industry trend I think we're going to see a lot of is, in general, a move to more house-made items. So, whether that's salad dressings, whether that's simple syrups, whether that's anything really anything that is in your food or your liquor cocktails more house-made items. And when we're talking about non-alcoholic beverages, you can make house-made sodas. It's great non-alcoholic beverage that you can put out there for folks. So really, we will see more house-made items. We'll see less things brought in from the store. This is good in a few ways. Generally speaking, you can house-make stuff for very little extra cost compared to buying it in and you can get a little bit of a premium because you are making it in-house. There's a little premium you can capture there on the price because guests are willing to pay more for things made in-house. This fits in with the overall trend of more local, more community-based things and it's really going to, I feel like, amplify. So I would encourage everybody if you can make something in-house for 2024, make it in-house.
Chris Schneider:
Like really push behind the move to more stuff made in-house, because there's no way that you can serve a menu of items especially when it comes to food that's all made outside of your doors and just kind of heated up and then served, and be successful. In the upcoming year it's really going to be about those small plates, small menus that we talked about, frequently changing and being very much more of a scratch kitchen than it used to be. And even if you think about the low end of the bar business because a lot of times I say scratch-made or homemade and people associate that with high-end bars only At the lower end of the bar business you can bread your own chicken fingers, you can bread your own chicken sandwiches, you can bread your own fish sandwiches. So all those things that you're buying frozen, pre-made, it's not always worth it. Now, the one thing I will say that's always worth it fries, tater tots, things like that buy them pre-made. They're actually normally better than if you do them in-house. We could have a long conversation about fries alone and why it's not worth making them in house, but anything that's breaded you can hand bread. Anything that you can do in-house, you should do in-house, in both your kitchen and behind your bar, because that is going to be a defining trend and one of the things that makes your guest experience better, that makes it seem more personalized, that allows you to react better to your guests as time goes on.
Chris Schneider:
The other general industry trend I see coming up in 2024. And this is one that I am definitely not sure on, but I see a lot of motion that makes me think that we are going to see this as less late night. And when I say less late night, it seems that post-COVID, a in a lot of major cities there has been crime late at night and B people don't stay out as late. Culturally, there's been a little bit of a shift, it seems, in a lot of places, away from staying out till 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning and more to like going home at 1 or midnight, obviously in college towns and there are plenty of places where that is not true but in general across the market I think we're going to see less late night and the really big driver in my head is the behavior of people but also crime that we've seen in cities. I know in Indianapolis, one of the main bar areas of Indianapolis, all the bar owners got together because they were having crime issues, they were having shootings and things that were happening in this bar district, and they all got together and they said look, we're all going to close at one because that will eliminate a bunch of the crime, it'll make people feel better and it'll help our businesses and it's actually worked. Now these are bars, though that 20 years ago, from one to three, was when they made all their money, so there's been a cultural change in some places. For sure, there has been a change in the way that we view safety and some of the things that are going on. Some of the crime statistics are worse now than they were years ago, so we will see what happens, but I think we're looking at less late night and kind of a more shifting of important day parts in our industry.
Chris Schneider:
Now, outside of some general industry trends, let's touch on tech real quick and tech trends that I see coming up In general. With tech, there has been this huge push behind the tech companies, behind these folks that make kiosks and QR codes and digital ordering and all that. That is stuff that came around during COVID. It will always be a part of our industry now, right, mcdonald's is not going to go back to just having countered with people. They have kiosks that are digital. Most fast food is moving in that direction.
Chris Schneider:
But I think, within bars in particular, we're actually going to see less tech in the front of house in the coming year, and when I say less tech, handheld POS systems, absolutely being able to run people's credit cards at the table absolutely that can stick around, but I think we're going to see less QR codes on tables. I think we're going to see less focus on online ordering and online delivery, which is a whole another topic that we'll get into a little bit more in a second. But I think we'll see less tech in front of house and a return to more of that personalized guest experience, because I feel like a lot of our guests are not buying that the tech makes their experience better, so it's not producing a positive for our guests. It can produce positive for our bottom line, but it's not if it's not increasing our guest counts. So I think we see less tech in the front of house.
Chris Schneider:
With that being said, though, I think we see continuing growth of tech in backup house. When I say backup house, I'm talking about a number of different things. I'm talking about things like kitchen display systems versus tickets in the back house, because you can get so much more data when you use a kitchen display system. More inventory management programs, new financial management programs for hospitality. I think we're going to see a growth in the management, inventory, back end side of things, the office stuff. A lot of automation and AI can come in there. So, backup house, a lot more tech, not necessarily all in the kitchen, but in the office. Absolutely on the admin side of things, apps are fricking. We're going to see a growth in more tech and more deployment of tech, because it's way more helpful and time saving in the back office than anywhere else.
Chris Schneider:
But I think we see a decrease in the front of house and a return to more personalized service with a bigger focus on the guest experience. So less tech out front, way more tech in the back and, along with tech, as I mentioned, online ordering delivery I think we're going to see a decline. Anyone that's in the business that does online delivery knows what a difficult, difficult thing it is to do as a bar and make money. So we'll see less online ordering, less participation with delivery services, because there's just no way when they're taking 25, 30% to really fight that and still make money. Now, obviously there are some arguments that can be made, but it's hard to make money doing a bunch of delivery with really low margins because it doesn't really affect your cost that much. It doesn't decrease your cost in front of house or anything, and it is another example of your food that's going out and there can be issues with the way people perceive your food based on what they're getting delivered to them.
Chris Schneider:
So I don't think we see growth in online ordering delivery. It's definitely here to stay. It's definitely part of a lot of businesses that we see, but it's not. I don't think at this point it's growing. I think it will decline in 2024. Along with that, ghost kitchens restaurants that don't exist except on paper I think are gone, but I do think that are declining. Those just have not worked out the way that people projected they would.
Chris Schneider:
I do think one place where we may see some growth on the delivery and online ordering side of things is bars and restaurants that have a separate bar or restaurant that does online. So what I mean by that is you have Joe's Corner Bar. Joe's Corner Bar has Joe's Corner Bar food and all that's true, but then you go on an online ordering platform or delivery platform and you see Bob's Sandwiches. Now Bob's Sandwiches are made at Joe's Corner Bar, but they're not really linked. So it's essentially a ghost kitchen business being run out of a normal business under a different brand, specifically for delivery and online ordering. I think there's some really good growth potentials there and it's a way to separate those two and to be able to play in both areas both sections of the market, if you will without having online ordering or delivery services pollute or give a bad impression of what you have going on in your establishment. So those are my predictions for 2024. We will look at these a year from now and see how right was I, but I think on a lot of these there's some pretty solid indications that we are definitely moving in these directions.
Chris Schneider:
Of course, with a presidential election in the US and the current state of the economy around the world, inflation there's a lot up in the air, but I really think that just means flexibility is key. We need to be nimble. We need to be ready to do quick menu changes, to quickly adjust our service. We need to embrace continuous improvement. 2024 is a year of flexibility and optimization. It's a year to focus on your strengths, to try to mitigate your weaknesses and to really build out something amazing from your guest experience perspective, so that, even when people are spending less money, even when they don't have necessarily the same disposable income that they used to, we are providing them with an awesome experience at a very fair value, that is flexible, that is reactive to their needs and makes them want to come dine with us, makes them want to come drink with us week after week after week, preferably multiple times a week. On that note, though, those are the 2024 predictions. Like I said, a year from now we will see how this all pans out.
Chris Schneider:
If you are still looking for a Christmas gift for anyone on your list, my book how to Make Top Shelf Profits in the Bar Business, which is now an award-winning book and one of Silver Medal from the Nonfiction Authors Association, is available for sale.
Chris Schneider:
It should still be early enough that you can get those books ordered, printed and shipped before Christmas, but make sure you order soon. Like I said, link to order that is in the show notes. There's also Audible and Kindle editions available in case you don't quite have time to get the physical copy. Additionally, make sure if you want to join in conversation with other bar owners and join our community that we're building online head over to Facebook, join Bar Business Nation there's a link for that in the show notes as well and if you would like to talk with me personally and have a strategy session on where your business is and how to really maximize things going into 2024, there's a link in the show notes. We'll do a complimentary 30-minute strategy session. We'll talk about your business, learn about where you are, swap some ideas back and forth and then see if there is a good opportunity to work with me moving forward. So with that I'll leave you guys for the week. Have a great one. We will talk again later.
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