The Rise of the Dive: Pivots produce profits for bar owners

The bar business is competitive and demanding.

Positioning is key but also, pivoting, knowing when to back off, knowing when to push, knowing when to offer food or switch the form of entertainment entirely. And for dive bars, it’s about embracing the dive bar definition or moving away from it.

Grady Wisdom, co-owner of The Flea at 637 S. Kimbrough Ave., said he and his partners wanted to carry on the dive bar idea when they took over the lease of Harlow’s in 2012.

Even its name, The Flea, was created with the idea of embracing dives.

“The Flea gives the connotation of the dirty little dive,” Wisdom said. “I loved Harlow’s. We didn’t want to change the spirit of Harlow’s. I just thought it was run down and needed some TLC.”

The owners made two bold moves. The first was within the first year of business – an experiment resulting from them “hemorrhaging money,” Wisdom said.

“We opened with food and we cut it off and it saved us something like $9,000 a month in labor and food waste. Our labor was cut dramatically, almost in half,” he said. “We then had to up our game in terms of service and events. Sales didn’t move.”

Then the thought: Who said a dive bar can’t expand and make connections in a new city?

Not Wisdom and his business partners.

On Sept. 30, what Wisdom calls The Flea-OKC had its grand opening in midtown Oklahoma City.

“We found another dive bar that was struggling. The location was good, the lease was good,” he said, noting it’s in one of the city’s oldest buildings.

“The Flea kind of took on another definition of the name, like the parasitic critter that it is.”

Pool and comedy
The operators of Billiard’s bar are looking to comedy as they move away from the dive connotation, said Kevin Frank, general manager of the 541 St. Louis St. bar.

Aside from interior improvements and adding higher quality drinks in recent years, they’ve gone a new direction with the Blue Room, formerly a place for live music. The switch came in June.

“It’s dark, it’s witty, it’s gritty, it’s underground and it’s hilarious,” comedian and Blue Room Comedy Club Manager Christopher Richele said.

The managers say the music market was flooded.

“We left the Blue Room nearly dormant for a year, not necessarily by design. Comedy kind of presented itself. It came to us and we found that it works,” Frank said. “We had the sound system in place.”

Richele said there are an estimated 50,000 standup comedians nationwide.

“There are plenty of standup comedians and not enough venues for them to work,” he said.

The pivot has not been without its challenges. Frank said parking has become an issue as comedy nights fill the lot and pool hall patrons have to look elsewhere. The managers plan to address that next year.

Richele’s been fighting the idea that because it’s in Springfield, it can’t be good quality comedy.

“I kind of feel like Springfield doesn’t trust comedy right now,” he said.

Many of the comics performing at the Blue Room are from the East Coast and Los Angeles, he said, pointing to Kenny DeForest and Ben Kronberg, a former Comedy Central act.

“We are booked up all the way into April, with comics who are on the upswing of their careers. You might not know their names today, but you will tomorrow,” he said.

Menu moves
At Lindberg’s Tavern, 318 W. Commercial St., co-owners Ryan Dock and Eric Weiler at first in 2009 just threw things at the wall to see what would stick. They host bands from all over the nation and recently welcomed an acrobat troupe from the University of Kansas.

They introduced food in August 2015 and their revenue has tripled, Dock said.

“We wanted to have fun with it, but play off of local and regional stuff, with that southern, home-style influence,” he said, noting the tavern is known for cashew chicken poutine.

In their menu selection, they looked up the street to see what already was offered, and recently dropped Cajun-boiled peanuts for pork rinds and revamped the beer list.

In a bold move, they quit carrying Budweiser, because they’re “just not big fans of bullies,” said Dock.

Budweiser’s parent company is trying to push through legislation allowing them to give refrigerators to retailers, which Dock said would push out beers from smaller breweries.

“Right now, it’s not legal to do, but it’s going to happen because they’ve got more money,” he said.

The Flea’s Wisdom is thinking about opening a kitchen, once the OKC site is humming along.

“I love that concept of the bartender cooking your food because you’re cross utilizing your labor,” he said.

In Oklahoma City, Wisdom is applying what he’s learned in Springfield. He said overhead isn’t large since the bar is so small and the partners have been thrifty. They don’t buy anything new.

This is The Flea: wood paneling, the back bar covered in things and a mirror that can hardly be seen because of items taped to it.

The partners consider these things dive bar staples and want to keep them. Bar regulars over time have made alterations to signs and a placard on the bar says “Bulls--- corner” in honor of a former patron named Steve Hogan.

All of these things are what Wisdom calls “positive vandalism” that enhances the look and the feel.

“We don’t have to do a million dollars here to make money,” he said. “Our sales, year-to-year, are within $2,000-$3,000 of each other.

“We definitely have a cap of what our sales can be because of our size and we don’t have food and everything. The growth has been more (in) profits.”


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