How to open a bar is one of the most-searched questions in hospitality, and the answers available online range from useless to actively dangerous. We have spent considerable time talking to bar owners at various stages of the process — from those still in planning to those who have been running successful rooms for a decade — and we have distilled their collective knowledge into the guide we wish had existed when they started.
The First Step Is Not Finding a Space
Every first-time bar owner believes the first step is finding the right location. It is not. The first step is understanding your concept with enough specificity that you can answer, without hesitation, who your customer is, what they are doing in your bar, and why they are choosing you over every other option within walking distance. This sounds obvious. It is not. Most failed bar openings can be traced to a concept that was never specific enough to survive contact with a real neighbourhood.
A concept is not a vibe. "A relaxed neighbourhood spot with good cocktails" describes approximately 60 percent of bars opened in any given year. A concept is a specific answer to a specific question: what does this bar do that nothing else in this postcode does? The most successful openings we have tracked all started with an answer to that question that could be stated in two sentences, and stayed true to it through every subsequent decision — menu, decor, pricing, staffing, and hours.
01
Amor y Amargo
East Village, NYC
$$
Bitters-Only / Tiny
Sother Teague opened this tiny East Village bar with one of the most specific concepts in New York: a bar where every drink contains bitters in a primary role. The footprint is barely 300 square feet. The concept is so clear that every decision — the menu, the bottle wall, the training programme, the clientele — flows directly from it. It has been running for over a decade and shows no sign of concept drift.
Order: The Bitterswitch or the Bittergarita.
02
Trick Dog
Mission District, San Francisco
$$
Seasonal Concept / Community
The Bon Vivants opened Trick Dog in 2013 with a concept built around a biannual menu redesign — each new menu structured around a different theme, from Hong Kong racing forms to vinyl record sleeves. The idea is clever, but the execution is what matters: the concept forces the team to stay creative without ever abandoning the quality of what is in the glass. The bar has been genuinely full every night for eleven years.
Order: Whatever the current menu's seasonal highlight is.
03
The Clover Club
Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn
$$$
Classic Cocktails / Neighbourhood
Julie Reiner opened the Clover Club in 2008 with a concept derived from a simple observation: Brooklyn had no bar that took the pre-Prohibition classic cocktail canon seriously. Everything else followed from that. The Victorian parlour design, the egg white drinks, the gin-forward menu, the wine selection that rivals many restaurants. Seventeen years later it still draws people from Manhattan across the bridge.
Order: The Clover Club (gin, lemon, raspberry, egg white) — the namesake and the benchmark.
Get your bar listed on barsforKings
We list bars in 60 cities worldwide. Submit your bar for editorial consideration through our submission form.
Submit a bar
Licensing, Permits, and the Timeline No One Tells You
Licensing is where most timelines collapse. The process varies dramatically by city and state, but in every jurisdiction we have researched, the timeline given by the licensing authority is optimistic by a factor of two. Budget for it taking twice as long as they say and you will be close to right. Budget for it taking the time they say and you will be in trouble.
In New York, a full liquor licence through the State Liquor Authority typically takes four to six months from application to approval, assuming no objections from community boards. In California, the ABC process for an on-sale general licence can run six months to a year. In Texas, a mixed-beverage permit takes three to six months. The cost of the licence itself is one part of the picture; the cost of carrying a lease on a build-ready space while you wait is another, larger part. We have spoken to owners who burned through their operating reserve waiting for their licence to come through.
04
ABV
Upper Haight, San Francisco
$$
Neighbourhood / Wine-Forward
Ryan Fitzgerald and Todd Smith spent nearly eleven months in licensing and permitting before ABV opened. They used the time well: finalised the menu, ran staff training in a rented kitchen space, and built relationships with wine importers. When the doors opened, the bar was immediately operational at a level that typically takes six months to reach. They credit the licensing delay with forcing a preparation discipline that most new owners skip.
Order: The Back Seat Betty or the Rhone-heavy by-the-glass wine list.
05
Pouring Ribbons
East Village, NYC
$$$
Cocktail-Forward / Compact
Alchemy Consulting opened Pouring Ribbons with a small footprint and a focused menu built around the interplay between refreshing and spirituous, between comforting and adventurous — the axes visible on every drink on the menu. The compact size keeps overheads manageable. The clear conceptual framework keeps staff training consistent. It is a useful case study in how a small bar with a clear idea can build a loyal following without needing the volume of a large room.
Order: Use the matrix to find your coordinates, then order what the bartender builds from there.
Weekly editorial
The bars worth going to, weekly.
One email per week. The bars our editors are recommending right now, across 60 cities worldwide.
Free. Unsubscribe anytime.
Staffing Is the Hardest Part of Opening a Bar
Most bar owners who fail cite staffing as the primary cause, or at least the accelerant. The hospitality labour market is tight, bartender retention is historically poor, and the difference between a staff that creates loyal regulars and one that drives them away is enormous. The best-run bars we know treat their hiring process with the same rigour they apply to their menu development. They articulate the values and standards of the bar clearly, hire for those values above technical skill, and train the technical skill in-house.
Pay matters, but it is not the only retention factor. Bartenders stay at bars that invest in their education, that treat them with professional respect, and that have a clear internal culture. The bars with the lowest turnover are almost always the ones where the owner or head bartender leads a weekly tasting or training session. This costs time and money and pays back many times over in reduced recruitment cost and consistent guest experience.
06
Employees Only
West Village, NYC
$$$
Late-Night / Full Kitchen
The five founders of Employees Only — all experienced hospitality professionals — designed their staffing model as carefully as their menu. Bartenders are called "custodians of hospitality" rather than service staff, and that vocabulary reflects a genuine philosophical commitment. The late-night kitchen (open until 3:30am) was added partly because it gives the bar a second revenue stream and partly because it gives kitchen staff and bartenders a shared purpose that builds team cohesion.
Order: The Provençal or the Ginger Smash. The bone marrow apps at midnight are not optional.
07
Mace
East Village, NYC
$$$
Spice-Forward / Focused Menu
Nico de Soto opened Mace around a concept simple enough to train staff on quickly: every drink uses a spice as its primary flavour driver. The conceptual clarity makes onboarding faster and quality control easier. New bartenders understand the framework immediately and can begin building within it rather than learning an undefined house style from scratch. The result is consistent execution across shifts that many more expansive menus struggle to achieve.
Order: The Cardamom Old Fashioned or the Saffron Sour.
08
Rule of Thirds
Greenpoint, Brooklyn
$$$
Japanese / Sake Cocktails
Opened in 2019 with a positioning unique in New York: a sake and shochu cocktail bar with a Japanese-leaning food programme. The narrow specialisation was deliberately chosen to create competitive distance from every other Brooklyn cocktail bar. It worked. The bar trained its team entirely in-house on Japanese spirits and fermented beverages, creating bartenders who could speak authoritatively about the menu in a way that builds genuine guest trust and commands premium pricing.
Order: The Sake Milk Punch or the Yuzu Gimlet variation.
The best cocktail bars right now
Our full guide to cocktail bars across 60 cities — the places doing the work that matters.
See the full guide
Our Verdict: What the Best Openings Have in Common
The bars that survive their first three years — the notoriously difficult period in any bar's life — are not the ones that opened with the largest budgets or the best press coverage on opening night. They are the ones that stayed specific about their concept under pressure, hired and retained people who understood what the bar was trying to do, and treated licensing and operational planning as the unglamorous work that actually determines outcomes.
If you are planning to open a bar, spend more time on concept clarity and staffing philosophy than on fit-out and menu design. The drinks and the room can be improved after opening. The fundamental question of what the bar is for, and who it is for, needs to be answered before you sign a lease.
The real cost of opening a bar
Before you sign anything, read our breakdown of where the money actually goes — and where most owners underestimate.
Read the breakdown
