Trials and Tribulations of being a live music venue owner... Chapter 1

Hey hey Elixir fam! There's been ALOT of stuff going on for quite some time now and while most of our regulars know whats been going on, most of you dont. I havent wanted to share the burdens, cause I always want people to be enjoying, and of course you all come to have a freekin great time! We didnt want to hinder you guys with this crap and put a dampener on you evenings with us!

However..... there are some things I would love for you to know where we came from with things and why we did and are doing certain things....

I have held off for quite some time now sharing our situationssssssssss..... but after having had a couple of convos latelty of supporters that don't get the opportunity to come in so often and have NO idea of what's been going on at all, they have all said, they wish they had known so to ask if there is anything they can do to help. So.

The time has come to share Whats Goin On..... and how we got here!

I'll be writing our little story from around our state reopen after rona in multiple parts so your eyes dont pop out with overwhelm from my lengthy writings.

I do need to get it all out and public as I also don't want it hanging out in my vibration anymore, I can't and don't want to talk about it anymore as it keeps me in that vibration..... I'm trying to stay positive as possible and focused af, so yea, need to get this out so I can clear this....

This is obviously, CHAPTER 1 of Trials and Tribulations of being a live music venue owner

Early 2021

We were going awesome! The world was opening again and we are lucky enough to have an amazing {local} landlord who allowed us grace to get through the otherside of the pandemic after so many small businesses closed, we're forever grateful  We had a full house almost every night, with capped numbers of course, but everyone was hanging to see live music again and the musos were craaaaaving to play!

April 2021

We started sharing a space with another cool guy to help us out by having someone run the kitchen and also to help them out by supporting a start up food business without the huge initial outlay that's required to start your own. It was a win win!

June 2021

We were both going quite well, however as we were still on capacity restrictions and due to recouping costs, we started doing paid ticket entry for our music evenings. More and more people were coming for the delish food and an opportunity came up for us to look at upstairs. All parties decided yes and we signed for the beautiful open space of upstairs. The space took on the restaurant vibz while we still ran downstairs as usual.

When we applied to extend our liquor licence to upstairs, we found that the space was only allowed to be office space through council regulations. This meant we had to apply for a Material Change of Use from office to Food and Bev. We foot the bill to change this as the lease was in our name.

To apply for an MCU to council, whether its approved or not, is based on square meterage. Ours came to just under $2k for the application. To also engage a town planner to get us over the line was another $3k. It definitely hurt the pocket considering we now weren't supposed to use the space and so pretty much dead rent money until it was all "legal".

As we were still on covid restrictions we were allowed to do take away! So we started doing this, patrons could order food downstairs and take away to upstairs as it was a private space. Woohoo! Small win!

The application was held up by the owner of the small units out the back who wouldnt look at, let alone sign the documents until their AGM end Aug! Her quarms were about our "mess" under our car port, which in all fairness had been added to, but we were just so tired after the last few years and just needed a break and our "weekends" while we had the chance, I felt we kinda deserved it, we'd all worked non stop for years! The Body Corps management also made it so it had to be a unanimous decision across all 5 lots, even though my landlords have majority rule. Hhhhmmmmm

August 2021

The fella running the food was starting to lose a bit of spark and mid August he advised he didn't want to be doing it anymore and would be leaving in December. We were in quite a bit of shock, as we'd only just signed a new lease which doubled our already quite up there rent. I was upset, disappointed and scared shitless for how the f!%k are we going to take back the kitchen work load as well as now pay full costs again downstairs as well as the new lease upstairs..... a week later he decided to leave mid September instead. We only had a Gentleman's agreement so no contracts.... one very expensive continuing lesson for me! We had some really great times though and we met some really beautiful people!

Then...... with the dredded date of the mandates looming as well..... we then got a visit from liquor licencing........

To be continued.....