# Starting a Bar in Portugal



## John Mc

My and a couple of friends planning to open a bar in Portugal, and would be greatful to hear from anyone who have some experience in this field. We are heading down there soon, for ten days as a recon trip, planning to check out some places, first and foremost Lisbon.

I have questions about everything, as we have very limited experience, but here are some more spesific questions:

- Advices about where in Portugal? maybe like a more up and coming area (to the degree that exist) but also not that season based - so its possible to acctually run a business all year around.

- Anyone with some experience with the legal work related to this? I hear its suppose to be hell.


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## Maggy Crawford

First question, do you speak, write and read fluent Portuguese?


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## MrBife

You need to have a great business plan and some strong USP's (Unique selling points) to set yourself apart from the others and make your bar a destination rather than one of the hundreds of thousands that exist here already.

Killer is always the rent unless you are rich enough to purchase the freehold.

Add to that your fixed overheads

And to that some kind of working wage

Factor in cost of stock

Cost of Marketing and Promotion

You will get a guideline figure for your costs but add a percentage of at least 33% for 'misc unknowns'

Set our your menu and work out what will be the average spend of each client

Work out your margins on what you are selling, beer/coffee/wine/food and calculate how many clients you need to meet the fixed costs before you begin to make any profit at all.

That may put you off completely but if not then work out how you can do some parallel promotion with a beer brand or do some clever marketing with a specific theme.

Have helped others do this and can say from experience it's very hard work to get things off the ground, you need to be inventive, resourceful and shrewd - if you have all those skills you may find you would make more money doing something else !

A good Portuguese lawyer and a good Portuguese accountant could become your best friends and have you up and running in a month or less with no real hassle.


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## Strontium

John Mc said:


> My and a couple of friends planning to open a bar in Portugal, and would be greatful to hear from anyone who have some experience in this field. We are heading down there soon, for ten days as a recon trip, planning to check out some places, first and foremost Lisbon.
> 
> I have questions about everything, as we have very limited experience, but here are some more spesific questions:
> 
> - Advices about where in Portugal? maybe like a more up and coming area (to the degree that exist) but also not that season based - so its possible to acctually run a business all year around.
> 
> - Anyone with some experience with the legal work related to this? I hear its suppose to be hell.





Is this a serious venture? Portugal is a relatively poor country with relatively low wages but has a good social/family structure. How could you possibly compete against local family run small businesses of bars and cafes whose overheads will be a fraction of your set up costs? The tourist areas both local or expat already have bars and cafe's struggling to keep afloat or failing and they have years of experience and tend to have different summer and winter opening hours. Portugal is large in area for its 10 million inhabitants, Lisbon and the urban areas round it are well spread out and have 25% of the total population but generally they don't commute so a local bar is local. Stay here for a few winter months and check out the bars, or the ones which are open, and do the basic maths on costs/profit/people/hours and see what income you can expect for 3 people running a bar in the low season. Even my local supermarket turns off the lights when there are no customers to try and reduce costs. There are basically no up and coming areas, partly due to economics and lack of employment, several big holiday housing projects are bankrupt and property prices have been relatively static for years.


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## MrBife

Fully agree with all the warnings - you need to make a big investment in time, money and energy + have nerves of steel. However many of the big 'go to' Lisbon bars are packed through the year and make very serious money for their owners - many of whom are Brits or PT Nationals with Brit partners. 

O'Gilins, Hennesy's, The George, Pensao Amor, Caravelas, Double 9 etc etc all feature big on Trip Advisor and the Portuguese love the difference between a tat local bar and a full theme venue with great music and some atmosphere. 'Old City Lisbon' is buzzing all year round now days - the quietest time probably being August.


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## afrique

I have been there and done it, and my advice is, don't do it. I don't want to go into on a public forum my story, but it was a nightmare I never thought I would wake up from. Now two years on, I can finally see how 'little' I saw before I invested. Wish I had listened when people warned me. I learned the hard way. Sorry to be negative but forewarned and all that.


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