Topic: Bringing foosball to my local bar

[rradjabi]

I'm trying to get an operator to bring a foosball table to a bar in my town. I live in a college town, and it has a big bar scene Tuesday through Saturday nights.

I talked to the local operator, and he said he has a brown marble coin-op in his warehouse. He said it would be free to put it in a location, and if I could keep it there for a month, he'd kick me $100. He didn't say anything about paying the location, so maybe I need to pay the location in order to get them interested.

I'm guessing someone on this board has done this before. What should I do to make this attractive to a location? I don't care about making the money, I would just like to have a table at one of our bars to get people playing. 

Also, how much space needs to be devoted to the table, 10 sq. feet?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[alaskan thunder]

Well in my experience, the vendor usually deals with the bar. They work out some kind of deal where they split the quarters minus the maintenance costs of the table. Go to the bar and talk to them first. If it is cool with them put them in contact w/ the vendor. As far as paying the location, I don't know about that one.

You will probably need more than 10 sq. ft. though. Get on the table and pull the 2 bar as far as you can. Take a step back and that is how much room you need on each side. The front and back don't need as much room but you need to keep it like 1.5 feet off the nearest wall.

[EDGEER]

32 sq feet is the average.  A lot of deals are Vendor and bar split the coins after tax stamp is paid.  Vendor pays for maintenance.  You may be able to cut a deal with the vendor to allow you to do the maintenance for him.

[rradjabi]

I don't see how this deal is profitable for the vendor. If he pays me $100/month, he may be losing money. 

[alaskan thunder]

Depends,but the quarters add up. I bet we give our bar $400-$500 a month per table.

[rradjabi]

So I'm going to go to a bar with some numbers and try to pitch the idea to the owner/manager. I'm thinking of bringing a laptop with some videos of tournament play in order to remove any misconceptions he may have of foosball. Do you guys have ideas on ways to pitch the table in order to make the deal attractive to the owner?


The vendor also offered to sell the table to me. It's a brown marble table, and assuming it's in good condition, should I consider buying it? It sounds like he wants to get rid of it, and I know he sold a blond coin-op a year or two ago to my friend for $500 delivered to his house. I can probably get a decent deal on this table if I gave him an offer (being that he's not getting any revenue from it at the moment).

[alaskan thunder]

Go for it man. You could get foos in your local bar and make some $$ in one fell swoop.

[chance37]

what state do you live in?

[rradjabi]

I live in San Luis Obispo, California. It's on the central coast, about 2.5 hours south of the bay area and 3 hours north of LA area, and only 30 minutes from where Michael Jackson had his trial, haha. It's a college town (Cal Poly) with a population of 40 k, and 20 of those are students.

[invisiblesmoke]

At a local tournament we once had a problem where the table wouldn't work; it wouldn't dispense foosballs.  Turns out the coinbox was so jammed full of quarters that it could hold no more.  Coins were spilled all over into the inside of the foosball table, hundreds of dollars worth.  And that was only one week's worth.  Where?  Fatboy's in Rapid City.