Imbibe Operator Plans High-End Beer Bar
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – The partnership that operates Imbibe Martini Bar plans to open a new bar on the second floor of its 124 W. Federal St. building that will offer offering craft and high-end beers, scotches and whiskeys .
Jeff Kurz, president of SKA Limited LLC, said the new establishment, as yet unnamed, will fill avoid that was discovered during market research and will cater to professionals. Kurz says the partnership plans a late-January opening.
“We’ve been successful on the first floor with Imbibe Martini Bar getting the business people to come downtown and support us,” he told members of the Youngstown Initiative committee Thursday. “We wanted to continue to capitalize on that market.” The committee approved a $20,000 performance grant for the project.
Imbibe, which is open Wednesday through Sunday, gets 140 patrons on Friday and 150 on Saturday, above the 100-per-night target set when it opened in 2004, Kurz told the committee. “But we are also aware that for the first two years that we opened, we had 400 a night on Fridays and 500 a night on Saturdays. So the market is there,” he continued.
Patrons of downtown establishments go from place to place. “We’re going to continue to try to capitalize on that,” he added. “Now that we have Vernon’s, Roberto’s and O’Donold’s, we think we can establish a stronghold and keep that money in the city,” he said.
Every time a new downtown establishment opens, Kurz said, his business picks up 30%. "I wouldn't invest anywhere other than downtown," he remarked.
SKA plans to spend $198,914 on improvements and reconstruction to prepare the 4,000 square-foot space, Tom DeAngelo, the city's economic development coordinator, told the committee. The company also plans to spend another $65,000 for equipment, inventory and design services.
“In downtown, the things you do have to be unique. They can’t be the same things you can find elsewhere,” he said. “This would provide a very unique experience for the people who are coming downtown. It would actually complement what Imbibe Martini Bar does on the first floor.”
When it opens, the establishment will employ a manager, two assistant managers and a bartender full time, plus an additional 14 part-time employees during the first year, adding additional part-time employees during the second and third years.
Kurz said he wants to lease space to a local restaurant to serve food at the new establishment. It will also have a small dance floor “with a rather strict dress code to make sure that it still caters to the kind of clientele that we’re catering to.”
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.