26 Degrees in the Shade . . .

Best Time to Start a Bar Restaurant, Costa del Sol

Seasons on the Costa del Sol

To answer this question we need to consider that the Costa del Sol has three seasons in commercial terms:

1. Low season – November to March
2. Mid season – April to June
3. High season – July to October

Opening Your Spanish Bar in July

f you open your bar in July, you will be at the learning stage right when you have a very high density of customers and you simply won’t be able to produce food and drinks fast enough to keep-up with demand.

You’ll lose a lot of trade because you haven’t yet developed the skills and organized working methods, to serve people fast enough. You may even end up with a bad reputation as a result. What’s more, you’ll fail to maximize on the high turnover available in the high season which you need, to keep your monthly average up for the 12 month trading period.

Opening Your Spanish Bar in November

This is the start of the quiet period on the Costa del Sol, so you won’t have a chance to practice at producing food quickly, as you wont have the density of trade to work with. But at this time you can work to perfect your menu ideas. You’ll have to wait until March until you can really start to practice your speed-working skills and to learn how to work in an organized way, whilst under pressure.

Opening Your Spanish Bar in February

This is the favourite time to start your bar or restaurant, because you’ll have say six weeks to practice and get your system for procuring supplies, cooking food and serving before you meet the Easter rush. When any holiday occurs in Britain, you’ll have a tremendous amount of additional trade and you’ll want to be fully up to speed, so that you can maximise your turnover.

Once you’ve experienced Easter and you’ve learned how to work efficiently, business will gradually build until June when you’ll start to get really busy, and then things will just get busier and busier until the end of August when trade will start falling-off. However September and October are still pretty busy months because it’s still hot and sunny, which attracts couples who don’t have children as well as golfers and tennis players etc.

My conclusion is simple: open your business a few weeks before Easter and you will be successful and do really well!

Handling Cash and Spotting Fake Cash in Your Spanish Bar

Cash

A bar restaurant handles a lot of cash, which obviously brings with it many advantages, but there are some disadvantages as well.

Firstly you have to be careful when taking cash home at night (a topic already covered in this blog). Secondly you need to protect the cash in the till from any light fingered employees, (I will be talking further about this in a future topic).

Spotting Counterfeit Cash

How do you quickly spot counterfeit Euro bank notes and what to do if one is offered to you?

I’ll start with an anecdote. Years ago when I had had little experience in the bar business I allowed a customer to run-up a large bar tab. He kept stalling me when I asked him to settle it and then one day when outside, I saw him getting out of his car and told him that I wanted him to settle on the spot, as I needed the money for something. He pulled out his wallet and said, “I only have American dollars and will have to get them exchanged before I can pay you.”

I thought quickly and said “Well then, give me what you owe me in dollars and I’ll get them changed”. I was very pleased when he handed over 400 USD. I took them straight to a bureau de change in Puerto Banus. When I got to the Bureau, I put the 400 USD on the counter and asked for them to be changed for Spanish Pesetas. The woman behind the glass screen said. “These are forged.” I grabbed them back really quickly, as she would have been within her rights to confiscate them.

A few days latter I saw the customer and explained to him my story with much discretion and he apologized for what had happened and exchanged them for peseta bank notes, so I finally got my money without losing a customer.

Well obviously there are always a few counterfeit bank notes in circulation and although it’s very rare for us to be offered one at our bar, (West-Marbella is an upmarket area), here are a few tips to help you from being dealt a sucker-punch and ending up with a counterfeit note in your till.

• Don’t allow young people to work on your till, (anyone waiting to pass a fake note will often seek out a young inexperienced person).
• Always feel for the raised ink with your thumb used on all Euro notes (see red arrows in picture.) If the note does not have this raised ink rectangular like shape then it is a fake.
• There are many electronic devices made now. I recommend that if you buy one, you should pass notes of 20€ and above through. These machines never fail to detect a fake note.

SpeedyBill

An automatic bank note counterfeit detector is shown in the photo. Visit the Speedy Bill web site.