The sleeping hours are not always about mai tai specs, pristine white beaches, and flair competitions. No. When bartenders dream it’s most often about opening their own place. Why work hard for someone else and not yourself? Yeah. My own thoughts have turned there quite often.

What the average punter doesn’t know is just how difficult and insane it is to own a bar or restaurant. In certain cities the cost of a liquor license alone is astronomical. Add food into the mix and you’ve got yourself even more headaches (health inspections, etc). Restaurants are lucky if they squeeze 10% profit out of their menu items. So that $50 steak might give back a $5 return. Actually a bad example because steak is often a high cost item. Anyway, there’s so many hidden costs. Plumbers, paper supplies, printer ink, grease removal, fire marshal inspections (yes you pay for those), hood cleaning, several types of insurance, toilet paper, soap, cleaning supplies, delivery charges, unseen repairs, license renewals, constant glass breakage. This and more of course is all on top of all the other normal stuff like having to buy food and booze, gas and electricity, water and trash. Oh, and the worst of all, labor cost. It just goes on and on. Think about it the next time you complain about the prices going up in your favorite restaurant and be grateful you can afford to do it and that you’re not washing dishes and cleaning your kitchen that night.

Beneath this mountain of neverending stress, I still dream. I’m still allowed. My place would be a casual little New York style bodega in the front with a sidewalk window where people could order and pick up sandwiches. BLTs, Ruebens, grilled cheese with tomato, grilled ham and Swiss, etc. Just easy, well made stuff. A little griddle back there. The sandos served in the bodega style, wrapped in foil and then served in a small paper bag like a school lunch. Maybe a fryer, maybe not. A tad grimy on the outside. Small inside with coolers for sodas and beer. A bell on the door. A cat in the entryway.

But behind this well orchestrated faux facade, a little bar. A dimly lit place with vague Japanese influence where I could serve up seasonal cocktails. You’d enter through the bodega and say hi to the guy working the flat grill. There would be a small entryway, no secret doors or anything even though that sounds cool. There would be something for everyone. Damn good cocktails without pretension and some beers offered. Miller High Life in bottles for sure. A quiet place to go, no DJs on Friday and Saturday nights. No music pumping so loud you can’t hear the people speaking next to you. Shit, maybe even a way to play some old records in the slow times.

When you got hungry you could simply go get yourself a sandwich and a bag of chips. I mean, that’s really what we all go back to. Yes, there would be an epic banh mi. Around the holidays, a Thanksgiving leftovers sandwich.

The only thing really separating my place from a dive bar would be the cocktails and of course, clean bathrooms. No piss troughs or urine soaked stench. The prices would be high enough to keep the college kids out but not so high to discourage the average schmuck from enjoying a tata made with produce bought from the farmer’s market that morning.