Hostel Bars

I was in the states when I was 20 - I think the whole drinking age thing was part of the experience. You had to sort of furtively hunt out places where they'd supply you. Also seemed to depend a bit on the state you were in as well - some seemed stricter that others. All seemed a bit weird and possibly exotic to me at the time.

The situation with the low drinking age never made me consider not travelling to the USA, but it did have an influence on which hostels I stayed at.

I avoided hostels with bars when I was under 21 and travelling around the states.

Generally hostels without bars would let you buy a few beers at the local shop to drink at the hostel. I generally found it easier to get served beer at a supermarket compared with a bar and if not, I could always get someone else from the hostel to buy beer for me.

Hostels with bars had to be a lot more strict about underage drinking otherwise they risked losing their liquor licence.

Even now at 39, I would still avoid bars when travelling in the states. I find the whole concept of tipping in a bar a bit intimidating and would rather avoid it altogether. Of course a bar in a hostel would probably be a completely different sitution - especially if it is only open to guests - since it would cater mostly to travellers from countries where tipping is not a custom (at least not a custom in bars).

If I do find a bar or restaurant in the states with an advertised "no tipping policy" they almost certainly get my business. I'm not stingy, but I find the whole concept a bit intimidating and I don't like the idea of bribing someone to do their job.

Some states are more strict than others when it comes to serving alcohol. In some places you can't have anyone under 21 in the bar area and in other places it is ok, especially if food is served or if it is open only to guests.

In the right location you may be able to make a hostel without a bar work, otherwise you may want to consider Canada. The alcohol laws are one reason I think a hostel in Windsor, Ontario would work better than a hostel across the river in Detroit; even though you are essentially in the suburbs.

It's annoying -- expect to pay an extra $1 when ordering a beer.

An extra dollar is excessive, but when everyone else does it you have to do it too, unless not tipping is an advertised policy. During happy hour, an extra dollar can be 50%. That's way more than the profit margin of the guy who owns the bar, yet the bar staff have invested nothing in the business other than their own time.

Yes $2.15 is not much, but you can afford to pay a little more if you charge more for the drinks. The customer pays the same but they don't feel like they need to bribe the staff just so they do their job. The whole process of tipping is really intimidating for many travellers and for this reason a hostel bar will do very well as a hostel is one place where travellers feel they don't need to tip. Many travellers would prefer to drink in a hostel bar over a regular bar for this reason alone.

Wages are just another cost of doing business and paying staff is the business owner's responsibility, not the customers'.

I have had low paying jobs like stacking shelves in supermarkets, packing CDs in a warehouse near Heathrow, clearing tables in a bar and carrying customers' groceries to their cars and I have never been tipped nor expected a tip. In fact I probably would have felt uncomfortable if someone tried to tip me.

Most people I know don't tip, but in Australia it is starting to catch on especially in trendy inner-city neighbourhoods. My local fish and chip shop in San Remo (1½ hours south-east of Melbourne) lost my business the moment they put a tip jar on the counter. Now I drive an extra few minutes to White Salt in Cape Woolamai on Phillip Island, where I have discovered the fish is so much better. My local fish and chip shop lost a regular customer through the selfish act of soliciting a bribe and I'll never return now that I have found somewhere better.

When I travel in the US I find I can avoid tipping by frequenting fast food places and buying most other food and drinks from supermarkets. However sometimes it is nice to linger in a cafe, especially if there is a free Wi-Fi connection and in these cases you are entering tipping territory.

It looks like I am getting a bit off-topic and what I have written is starting to sound like a blog post. I'll expand on it and post it on my blog. So often I write a detailed post on these forums and then think that it would be better on my blog. But then I can't really do that once the forum post begins to incorporate responses from other members.

Anyway back to the topic of bars in hostels.

I don't think that having a bar makes a big difference to the hostel's atmosphere, but there should be somewhere nice to have a drink. In some cases having a bar is a lucrative extra source of revenue (just like selling tours and bus/train tickets), but the associated effect of complying with liquor licencing laws (such as banning drinking outside the bar and being tough on underage guests) can have a detrimental effect on the guests' experience at your hostel.

Done properly a bar can create a great atmosphere and bring in extra money, but done the wrong way it can create friction and annoy your guests(particularly if complying with liquor licencing laws affects your level of customer service).

Not to take the conversation too far in the wrong direction, but as a tip-dependent employee in the US, I feel a certain duty to defend the importance of tipping a minimum of 15% in sit-down restaurants (for good service, these days it is standard to tip 20%). Servers get paid between $2-3 an hour by the restaurant (US minimum wage is around $7), including the time they spend setting up before each shift begins. We are taxed on that money, and also taxed on 10% of our total cash sales. As we are required to tip out 5% of our cash sales to support staff including bartenders and bussers, the government is assuming that customers are always tipping 15%, which, as you might guess, does not always happen. Because our salary is so low, it is usually just enough to cover the money we owe in taxes (or not quite enough) so we receive biweekly paychecks for $0. Also, even restaurants with excellent benefit packages do not cover health insurance for tipped employees (the best I've seen is paying 2/3 the cost for employees who've worked there for over 3 years, and that is rare), so that is another expense that must be considered. When all is said and done, tips are all we are paid, and in return we are expected to be experts on the menu and provide the customer with a "perfect" experience.

While I agree that the system is perverse, it is what it is and therefore I implore you: take care of your servers! Your money is all we have! Okay, I just had to get that out. Really, just do as you please.

Now back to the issue at hand: Bars at hostels in the US?

I was thinking it might be nice to open a hostel with a summer beer garden, but US alcohol laws make it difficult. If I could afford the license, I think what I would do is sell draught and bottled beer on site and be very strict about underage drinking (to avoid serious punishment and/or losing the business), but also allow BYOB so as not to exclude.... but that still would leave me liable for anything that might happen to someone underage under the influence. So it's tricky...