Thread: Questions about opening a bar???????

Hello, skunksounds

Another "bar" in Bali? You might be lucky.

I wrote a more considered reply for you but hit a wrong button and lost it. No mattter. Others have jumped in with their suggestions/opinions.

The first thing I wondered about is have you ever been to Bali? If not, that would be the first step, to my way of thinking.

Secondly, you can't just rock in to Bali, buy a "work visa", find a place to rent and open for business. It ain't that simple, or easy. Get a taste for the Indonesian bureaucracy, for starters. And that might be the least of your worries.

Depending on location, you'll still have to deal with various 3rd parties, be they the village banjar, the local version of a "Mafia" group in the area, (if there is one), getting a licence to sell beer, your "suppliers", etc. Finding reliable or "efficient" staff can also be problematic. Did I mention getting electricity connected, or, a telephone line installed?

Don't shoot me down in flames here but my understanding, (and experience), of American "beer", so far, leaves a lot to be desired. I know there are some and glad to hear that you don't class Budweiser as one of them. My point here is that apart from Americans, US beer doesn't quite cut it for most of the rest of the world.

Importing some of the good beer that exists in the USA would be a financial nightmare for a "small drinking establishment", for several reasons. Import taxes in Indonesia are way over the top, these days, with no relief in sight. Beer in Indonesia, like Bintang, is still reasonably cheap. Attracting customers to pay exorbitant amounts of money for imported US beer would be difficult. Especially enough of them to pay your bills and make any "profit".

Last, but by no means least, is "the competition". Unless your small drinking establishment really has something very different to offer, why would anybody drink there in the first place?

If, by some miracle, it gets going and starts attracting customers, others around you will start copying it, (usually within a few months). And some of the ones before you, (whose customers you've "stolen"), might burn your place down.

I hope you take this post in the spirit it's intended. Just trying to help.

I loved this comment from wepro and appreciate that it's a communication mishap.

As I know you cannot import any alcoholics. There is only one company (state owned) in Jakarta which has a licence for importing alcoholics. This company covers all Indonesia including Bali. Nobody else can do it (legal).

If there weren't already too many alcoholics in Indonesia, including Bali, (both expat and local), this could be an interesting idea.

Trouble is "alcoholics" are generally thought of as non-productive. (Usually true, except for high-paid lawyers and barristers). A few have made successful and lucrative careers in the West. Tom Waits, for example, springs to mind, although he might have been pretending all these years.

8)

I would like to clarify, although I was born and raised and raised in a small town which happens to be one of the 13 cities/towns in America to have a Budweiser brewery, I don't consider it to be a "good" beer, only one that I missed for obvious reasons. It is also one of the cheapest, as far as an import beer in Indonesia would be considered.

That being said, getting tourists to drink Budweiser at it;s relatively low import cost would be hard enough, nevermind something a bit more expensive.

Good luck to you though, and if you do open a bar, I would be happy to come by and by a beer or two.

Hi JohnnyCool
Oh yeah, sorry: "Alcohol" and "Alcoholics". Funny for mixing up the two words but sometimes it not that easy for me writing in English.
Ok, we know its not allowed to import "alcoholics". My question now: Is this one of the reasons why we have the "Alcoholics Anonymous" (AA) ? This stuff can be imported easily, all you need is just passport and VOA :-) :-) :-)

Jimbo has it right! Their are soo many bars and cafe's in Bali that you most likely would simply be throwing your money down a big big hole.

Forget about it and save your money.