I have some exciting news to share about a new business venture I’ve been working on – The Listening Room at 443.
My friend Joanna and I have a little production company we run in addition to our full-time jobs – Red Shoes Black Bag Productions. We specialize in musical events that benefit local not for profit organizations. We both have very intense day jobs, so we squeeze in our shows during slower seasons.
In 2014 we produced a music series that we really loved – The Listening Room Acoustic Music Series. It was held in a large private room in a local restaurant and featured regional recording artists in an intimate setting. Our goal wasn’t really to make money but we needed to at least break even. It was about a 100 person room and we did pretty well with ticket sales, but it was still nearly impossible to break even. The ticket sales paid the artist, plus we had to pay someone to do sound and cover the advertising expenses. The restaurant didn’t charge anything, but they kept the bar and typically a lot of our guests ordered food as well. It was a good situation for them, not so much for us.
We recognized early on that it wasn’t a viable option unless we were able to keep the bar sales, so we did one season and pulled the plug.
Fast forward to March of 2017.
The DRG and his family own a 3 story building in town that has a commercial space on the ground floor and apartments on the 2nd and 3rd floor. His brother lives in one of them and he’s in charge of managing the building. The commercial space had been a bar for most of its existence, but most recently had been home to a woman who planned to open a furniture consignment shop. She was there for a year, and never ended up actually opening – she just used it for storage and when she left she abandoned a lot of her stuff.
The space had been vacant for months when I saw it for the first time in March of 2017. The room was in pretty rough shape and it’s located in a neighborhood that needs some love, so they had not been successful in re-renting it.
The ceiling needed to be patched and painted, the bathrooms looked like a gas station in a third world country, and overall it was crying out for some TLC. Of course, I decided on the spot it would make a great location for a new business 🙂
The original concept for the Listening Room at 443 was a room that would be open for scheduled events only and we would offer beer and wine at the bar. We thought we would offer the space for rent for CD release parties, art shows and private parties on the nights we didn’t have something going on. We began painting and cleaning up the room, but as we talked through the business model it became clear it would be difficult to turn a profit unless we maintained a pretty aggressive event calendar. At that point, Joanna reluctantly decided to bow out of the project. Aside from her demanding day job, she’s a vocalist who performs with several area bands, so her schedule was just too packed to take on something that time-consuming.
Luckily for me, the DRG was getting more and more intrigued with my little endeavor and decided he wanted to jump in.
We knew that in order for it to be a viable business, we needed to do more than just host a handful of special events every month. Eventually, we settled on a dual concept business model – we would keep the idea of hosting special events in the evening with the bar, but during the day it would be a funky and comfortable coffee lounge. We don’t have a kitchen, so food options need to be simple – baked goods in the morning, simple but fabulous sandwiches for lunch and cheese and meat platters to nibble on in the evening.
So after changing partners, changing the business concept and fits and starts of activity due to work schedules, we are currently going full speed ahead! We’re hoping to have the coffee part open by early fall this year, followed by the live music venue opening whenever we can get the liquor license pushed through.
Since we’re not sitting on a pile of money, I’ve been DIY-ing and bargain shopping to decorate the room. I can’t wait to share all my fun projects with you! Stay tuned.
