Master Class: How to Increase Laundry Revenue Fourfold

Laundry bar and other ideas on how to create an atmosphere and attract the right visitors.

To open in St. Petersburg an institution that works both as a bar and a launderette, Alexei Lukyanov, at that time the general director of the financial company Yumis, a German friend Anke Navottne decided to do so. She designed it - for the student of the Academy of Art and Design of Zurich, the Bar "Laundry-40" became a thesis. Furniture was searched by commission and ordered to St. Petersburg artists. Lukyanov brought used washing machines and dryers by ferry from Germany, where laundry bars are a familiar business.

The cost of washing 150 rubles, drying - 100 rubles. Directly, the laundry brings “Laundry” only a quarter of the revenue, reaching 5-6 million rubles a year. But it is precisely the combination of the laundry and the bar in one room that Lukyanov considers to be a competitive advantage: word of mouth is the best advertisement.

Among the regulars there are many musicians, poets, students. “Our clientele is the St. Petersburg subcultural stratum, ” Lukyanov describes his visitors. A lot of foreigners. But Lukyanov himself in the “Washing” is rare - after defending his diploma Anke, the couple went to Berlin, where Alexey now has a new business - infographic studio.

Lukyanov’s guide at the opening of the laundry bar was Anton Belyankin, the fashion trendsetter for such places in St. Petersburg, as the leader of the Two Airplanes group. He was the first to bring the fashionable European concept of club life. In 2003, with his girlfriend, also German Anna-Kristin Albers, opened the Dacha bar on the principle of similar Hamburg bars on the small Dumskaya street, departing from Nevsky.

The principle of such bars is simple. In a small area (up to 100 sq m) live DJs should play, only alcohol and snacks should be sold. But the most important thing is face control, it does not monitor who is dressed and how sober, but so that visitors do not create problems for each other and are of the same cultural level. Albers herself described the principle of her establishment in such a way: "Jackets are not stolen from us, nice people gather and do not change the ashtray after the first cigarette butt."

The task, it would seem, is utopian. Especially for Moscow. In the capital, only the Lighthouse and John Donne can claim the title of such places. In St. Petersburg, this has become the most popular bar concept. But only after Anton and Anna divorced. Anton literally opened the "door to door" with the "Cottage" bar "Fidel". It is unlikely that their owners knew what synergy is, but this is exactly what happened. In a small area between Nevsky Prospect and several parallel streets, their number is now in the tens. And Dumskaya street became a synonym for club life in St. Petersburg.

Three of them belong to Belyankin - he compensates for the relatively low turnover from one place by their quantity. Now among the Petersburg bars is a competition of concepts. So the same Albers, who has been living in St. Petersburg for ten years, opened the Dunes summer cafe several years ago in the courtyard of one of the houses of Konyushennaya Square. She poured beach sand and put sunbeds. Since the main visitors to such places come at night, they had to sunbathe under the moon.

Master Class: How to Increase Laundry Revenue Fourfold