What is a small bar?

Experience has taught me, confusion is caused by the category “Small Bar” here in Perth, as many of the guests that chance across us have only ever experienced large “Taverns” and “Restaurants”.

So, what is a small bar? It is in many ways less formal than a “Tavern” we don’t have a dress code, ‘cos we assume our guests have got dressing themselves covered, we don’t have a theme, or really very many rules, all we ask is if you visit our venue you treat everyone as you would your favourite family member. We love making what we call fancy drinks, you can call them cocktails if you like, but we’re just as happy if you have a beer or a wine.

So, a small bar is a place where you can hang out with your friends, meet new friends, wait safely for a friend, have something tasty to eat, enjoy a coffee late at night, if you’re reckless enough.

To us from the rest of the world we just call it a bar, a friendly place where you’ll receive services from professional hospitality workers, not someone just passing the hours whilst they study to work in another industry.

As a small business yeh, we’re a small business that’s what the small in “Small Bar” indicates 😊, we have a smaller offering kinda makes sense when you stop and think about it, we spend a lot of time and put a lot of thought into the products we do sell as we are only able to have a small list. I’ve lost count of the thousands of times a customer has been rude to me because we only had select products and not the ones they wanted, sometimes if I’m lucky I’ll get them to try something else and on really rare occasions they might even admit to enjoying it and once or twice a year they may even say thank you for the effort I’ve put into serving them,

There are many challenges to running a “Small Bar” as we have to adhere to all the same compliancy and rules as big “Taverns” and Perth is indeed the land of compliancy and rules, maybe this is to do with the history of how Australia was settled maybe it is because of the mining industry being the dominant employer, that’s a discussion for another day.

Anyhow the thing is with small business it needs a certain amount of malleability within the system to survive and Perth ain’t the place for that, if you’ve ever had the displeasure of dealing with the Health Department here you will know what I mean by this statement. These organisations attract the sort of person that loves a rule and loves having the power to enforce it as they see fit, sort of the anti-Christ of small business.

So, a “Small Bar” is a little bar with big bar headaches and we do it ‘cos we truly love hospitality we must, considering the anguish we endure to do it. We are rich in experiences and friends.

Every now and again I get to make a really fancy drink for a well-mannered appreciative customer and they smile and I smile, ‘cos it’s easy and simple to make nice drinks and it’s even easier for nice people to enjoy them, that’s when a “Small Bar” is indeed just a “Bar”.