Brennan Reed

'How Not to Open a Bar: An Owner’s Cautionary Tale of Misfortune' is a tragic tale of my own personal business misadventure. The narrative nonfiction guides potential entrepreneurs through the entire process of opening a bar or restaurant. The book is arranged in chronological order of chapters, describing each step that is required to squander your life’s savings away. The opening chapters discuss the process of acquiring a location and negotiating your lease, while the closing chapters elaborate on the terrible customers and employees. The goal of the book is to demonstrate the harsh reality of opening and managing your own bar in an extremely merciless industry. All of which, was never taught in business school, nor those optimistic “how to” books. The book is satirical in nature with a humorous undertone. Each page has multiple asterisks, allowing the reader to discover comical annotations at the bottom of the page. However, the book does contain vast amount of factual knowledge gained from my personal experience of running a successful bar for over 7 miserable years.