How To Run A Successful Cigar Bar In A Competitive Market - Interview with Acere Cigar Lounge

[Music] hey what's up everybody this is uh reggie kimball aka stickman number one kicking it in lithia springs georgia today we're aboard brian t from asiya cigar lounge what's up brian what's up man hey thanks for having me out here man thanks for coming yeah we are puffing today i'm puffing on uh what am i puffing on here uh actually the predominant wrap was uh chuck right chris chris chris harper's here today i guess it was my lucky day ran into chris and he blessed us with a couple of sticks for the podcast so it is uh a 10th anniversary per domo so and you have to you have the maduro i have the sun growing so you actually came out ahead oh yeah okay well you know what he he must i'm a new guy so i got the new guy privileges i'll lean on kicking on you get help um so so i've been looking forward to doing this man i appreciate you uh having us out at the stick men and uh we're just gonna chop it up man i want to know all about what's going on here because my first time down here was a few weeks ago when i actually had the pleasure coming out to cigar mike's christmas oh yeah and that you guys were hosting man yeah good old cigar miner hey that brother gets you in a lot of trouble oh yeah yeah tell me about it yeah so he actually came on the stickman podcast a while back i don't know if you saw the episode we had a good time we did that when um over at uh highland cigars okay uh and had a great time man so so today everybody we're gonna do a little puff sniff chat and we're gonna repeat that [ __ ] over and over again before bryant he's the owner here uh lounge and we got connected a few weeks ago like i just said and now we get a chance to just really kind of understand what it's all about here man how long have you guys actually been open we opened uh october 21st of 2018. okay is that right 2000. yeah no no 2019. so it's been a couple years now almost one year one year yeah one year in about three three months okay all right yeah so it's uh it's not long before kovac exactly right yeah so we were open about three months and then we had to close for seven weeks because of it and luckily we're far enough outside of the city of atlanta where um the government hasn't leaned terribly okay hard on you're still able to do your thing a little bit yeah yeah now um and do it responsibly because i see you guys yeah i've been watching your posts online yeah yeah we try and do the social distancing people don't really want to listen so you got to remind them but do social distancing hand sanitizing washing of the hands uh fumigating the the uh the lounge stuff like that just to try and keep people as safe as possible okay um so but yeah after that seven weeks we were closed we opened back up and it was like we just took off okay it was beautiful you were over just a few months and then covered did that freak you out a little bit oh yeah yeah and when you spend that type of money yeah launching this yeah you know and then the government comes down and says yeah by the way close and uh unfortunately with all the benefits packages and bailouts that they were rolling out with they were all based on the previous year's business so we shouldn't have seen the basis right exactly so um i had two months of you know two and a half months of business history okay to base it on so i didn't get the big bailout that some of these other bigger guys got um but they gave her a little something and luckily enough i'm i'm smart with with the little bit of chips i do have so okay i was i was uh i was prepared for the worst and uh because i figured we'd be closed for six or eight months okay but luckily that wasn't the truth so um after that seven weeks they came down and said you know we can open that limited capacity and all that good jazz so we followed all the guidelines okay kind of slowly yeah yeah yeah we didn't even tell people we were reopening we just opened the doors and seen who okay who would pop in not even your members no the members are always you know yeah yeah remember what was that yeah yeah um by the way you drinking real quick cheers you go back to that so this is uh actually an asir bourbon old-fashioned okay and what i did was uh i got with asw um who is a local distiller and i bought a barrel of bourbon from them oh hold on we're not dealing with bottles here you talking about you have a barrel i bought the barrel yeah and i had it bottled for us here yeah so uh okay it's great uh you if you're a bourbon person you'll absolutely love it but it will put you on your ass because it's 115 proof it's barrel proof what so if you're not you know if you don't like the hard stuff this ain't for you well i may have to try that yeah but i'm gonna try that i'm just sipping a little scotch meat so uh keep up with you man and you got a serious cocktail list by the way oh yeah impressive i want to come back to that in a second yeah uh but so you've made it through covert though made it through kovid uh reopened and we were just very well received from our community we we're kind of in a sweet spot because our nearest shops are dedian company and hiram who's about i don't know 10 or 12 miles um that way so you gotta do the area unlocked yeah yeah conrad at cigar was about 10 or 12 miles that way so we're kind of in the sweet spot between the two of them um i'm sure that was strategic being the business yeah and then we have of course up in douglasville we have cigar box so and we all get along really well so there's no we're it's it's like a good family of all of us which is a beautiful thing i've never been in an industry before where people were friendly um to each other and i don't even see them as competition there's plenty of business for everybody um i'm a man chris harper from uh chris thank you for the stick by the way appreciate your good stay yeah so there's plenty of business for everybody so it's not that cutthroat industry where everybody's [ __ ] on each other bad mouthing i love them they people don't understand that man i try to tell people that i don't know if it's like that in every city i've been to quite a few but atlanta there's a lot of love amongst the lounge owners and if we're being candid and being honest there's a couple shops that some of us don't okay deal with but okay we can't label everybody yeah that's as part of the family but not right 90 of us get along very well okay and uh are i guess fortunate enough to call each other friends i mean even the patio all of these the patios dear friends of mine i was there they were talking about yeah they were mentioning that yeah so i just i just love it and you know it's it's kind of like that's a good segue into i think part of the reason why i love cigars so much because there's nothing nothing else on earth that brings people together like a cigar right that's right so for us to be able to blend almost like a family all of our shops that's just a testament to what cigars do right yeah that's right i tell people it's about the people you meet the relationships you build the conversations that you have with people man the cigar is one thing and i love smoking on a good stick as we have right now but really eating you and getting to know your stories i mean come on yeah and it's i i see it in here all the time i see literally members of mine that are multi-million dollar cats sitting next to a guy that scroll and scrounged up enough enough money to buy a stick and sit down and they're having the best conversation it doesn't matter if he's got all the money in the world and he's dead broke it doesn't matter not in this lifestyle man yeah that's that's really the beauty of it yeah it's the culture yeah and in it and it expounds or crosses over all color lines and political forecasts and all that and we can just hone in on what's important in that moment and that's fellowship brotherhood and or sisterhood and sitting down and smoking a good stick i love that man especially you mentioned something too you get to leave a lot of the politics and all that stuff out especially today right now for those who don't know we are taping and today is wednesday january 6th and i don't know if you've been paying attention but today all [ __ ] hell is breaking loose right now up there in dc and but right now we got a cigar lit in the whiskey little whiskey we could forget about it for a minute as long as they as long as they don't bring that [ __ ] to 2 30 thornton road we're all right exactly i'm right there with you a buddy of mine literally just sent me a picture of some guy in a zoot suit sitting inside the capitol um i don't know where they happened yeah everything yeah yeah there's a dude in regular clothes like a domestic terrorist sitting in the rotunda at the head of the whole whole thing right now that's [ __ ] that really is [ __ ] i'm sorry that's [ __ ] i don't care what side of that you're on this [ __ ] yep i agree um so yeah man but back to the half more pleasant topics uh seriously i obviously been a cigar man for a minute now you assuming have you had a lounge before is this your first one i've had a bar so i had a bar probably 10 or 12 years ago in john's creek but it wasn't a cigar bar so what happened was i've i've got an extensive history in construction so when i sold my last bar i went into commercial back into commercial construction and did that for a long time and i started flipping houses for myself okay um and i did that for five or six years and we just got burned out and doing it so i knew the bar industry and i had a passion for cigars okay so i just smacked those two things together that's a nice combination yeah yeah and ended up here and it's it's been great man okay i'm luckily lucky enough to say that i love my job i mean it's got its headaches of course of course but um every job has its headaches i i just really like what i do and i like the people um is atlanta home for you are you originally i'm a florida boy okay but i've been here so long that this is home right that's how i'm a florida boy too i'm from tampa okay yeah i lived in tampa i lived in valerico uh brandon valrico for several years that's why i went to arnwood high school okay yeah and uh and parents in-laws everybody is in that very grand inval rico area so yeah yeah we're homeboys yeah so but you know everybody asks where are you from i'm from florida but atlanta is home okay and i'm probably not going anywhere i can't convince my wife to move to wyoming so oh is that where you would go yeah oh man everybody's always like what's in wyoming i said nothing that's why i want to go you want peace and tranquility that's what it sounds like what are you going for keep working on that we might break it down all right good luck sounds like you've tried that already so i do some research man and you tell me if i'm right i said a seer what does a seer mean i said i found it is this right i said miami is that right yeah so the true pronunciation of the word is okay thank you it's kind of like it's a street term more in cuba than even miami it's a street term for homeboy okay so like we're saying that yeah yeah yeah so it's like what we would say was what's up homeboy okay they'd say ksn like ksn yeah okay yeah so okay um it's just kind of me being from florida and grew up in miami and it just uh and i wanted to keep with that cuban theme because cubans kind of mastered the art of cigar rolling from from the jump that's why i came up with uh with a seti i just got so tired of educating people on how to say it and they came in here and kept saying to see her i was like you know what so let's go with a seer okay you're driving some serious now everybody gotta pay attention to this you opened up this lounge and you called it a set a lounge but the the customers yeah changed it by default yeah yep and i came in it was introduced to me as i said right so originally i was trying to tell everybody no this is how you say it and it was exhausting so i was like you know what let's just call it what you guys want you know just gave up hey everybody come down to see a lounge but it's actually a setting i said i said it yeah all right cool i like that and so these launchers were you like planning this a long time so i started looking for spaces uh probably a year before i signed a lease on this one okay and what happened was the original space that i wanted to grab was down in union city okay and i couldn't make it work with the landlord and leasing agent they were being really weird and luckily it didn't work because now and i don't know if you're familiar with uh brian boulware he's opening uh studio cigar what's in fair burn which is one exit yeah i did hear about that i didn't remember which his place is magnificent so you already checked it out a little bit oh yeah i've walked it with him it's beautiful you guys got to go check it out okay we will it's coming your way yeah it's amazing um he's going to probably be it's the the mecca of cigar cigar lounges for the southeast are you serious he built it from the ground up it's absolutely beautiful um i'm looking forward to it his grand opening is the 15th of next week so that's just a few days away think about it a week away yeah um great guy great business um i think he'll do really really well down there you will be there to support how many who else would given what other industries do you see plug because at the end of the day it is but it's it's family too and it's the culture and it's the vibe which is a beautiful thing that's what it's all about yeah um so oh but before i forget ourselves so my the original spot was in union city but luckily it didn't work out because i had no idea that brian was in the in the works of putting that together and then i just got online i was scrubbing the internet trying to find new spots that i was interested in and this came across based on where you live there anything you decide i'm gonna find the right spot there's a right spot okay i live in south fulton okay um which is not bad 11 12 miles from here um so i came across this spot and it used to be a johnny's pizza so i came to look at it and then i did my market research a traffic count um demographic uh and then i saw how far the other shops were from where where i was at the poppy right there and uh i have conrad and i are very close friends and i wanted to make sure i didn't step on his toes because he had been really good to me so i called him and i said hey meet me over at this address so he came over and i was like this is my plan is it going to offend you or am i stepping on your toes and he said absolutely not man do that [ __ ] and so yeah this is a beautiful round by the way thank you so much and i appreciate that and so i started it took me six months from pretty much from the day i signed the lease to the day i opened um it took me six months to build it out because when it was johnny's pizza it was a complete [ __ ] like i mean it was terrible this is a good job except the bathrooms okay so i left the bathrooms in place and gutted everything you could see straight from the front door out the back door okay so all these walls everything you see is new okay um which originally i hadn't planned on doing that but once i got into it i was like yeah i'm gonna have to i'm gonna have to gut it so but i'm glad i did because this is my vision like my vision looks just like this it looked like this on paper and it converted perfectly and you know in person so you i had an architect that helped me i kind of decipher my thoughts um and she was wonderful um but for the most part this is exactly out of my brain okay so all right well yeah i'm impressed you hooked it up thanks so so what do you wish you knew about this before you actually you know started there's got to be some challenges you had right i think my biggest challenge if we're being candid is i've never had more staffing issues yeah you know in the hospitality arena staffing is just really really hard right i started my career in hospitality on the management side so i know yeah so it's it's been a challenge for sure um and both front of the house and back of the house which my last bar or restaurant it was challenging but not near this this many challenges which we make it work and i mean we have a pretty great team at this point a year and a half in but you had to go through some learning pays right oh man probably had a lot of churn earlier i mean a lot yeah yeah like the turnover in here was incredible at the beginning oh man and then did you have some epic firings and like get the hell out of here yeah so but you know um with that old saying uh if it was easy everybody do it that's true so that's true just keep on plowing at it that's true oh man um so all right so employees i know from a challenge from from my own past i know that's a tough part yeah you feel like you got that lick now so you got to solve a strong team i tell you my first time here the uh your servers and your bartenders they all showed a lot of love and really seemed to be i'm on point so it sounds like whatever you did to get it together you got it together well it's constant attention right like there's not a not a lot of days where we can let up ease up so it's always uh you got to be not on them but you got to be visible okay right yep um either myself or my general manager we're always here we're always attentive we're always watching yep um just to make sure there's a standard that's right and then when the standard dips we pick it back up that's what i said and you're here you're holding everybody accountable man for quality service and i expect the same from them if i if i dip or if i fail somewhere um i expect them to say hey bt i've always told my teams that you can i gotta open door you gotta have a thick skin man you can't have any ego in this if you want to be good right one thing i really like about a city i'm gonna say i said i don't care about the rest of everybody lounge then we know i fell off from florida you know you know and my very first girlfriend in life was puerto rican i want to talk about that because some people get mad if i say that she taught me a few words but i could say i can't roll my arms i never quite got there but i'm okay you broke up too quick exactly exactly but one thing i like about a saturday lounge is that it's a lounge and you take the cigar smoking seriously clearly by the humidor that you have and we get some good photos to folks on the podcast you'll see these photos but um i like the fact that it's a it's an event venue really yeah i mean maybe you tell me if i don't want to classify it raw soon but you guys got the dj popping sometimes you got live music jumping off sometimes i even saw on instagram the other day that you got a stroke and uh was it a stroke and pain eventually started smoking stroke that's it smoking stroke coming up which is like people light up and and pain yeah yeah so i when we open this well let me start here there's a lot of bars in atlanta that just happen to have cigars that's right but there's a few cigar bars right does that make sense that makes sense yeah we are a cigar bar our focus is on the cigars um so many people sometimes lose focus of the cigar in my opinion yep yeah um so yeah we do do entertainment but it all comes back to this right like this is what we're here for this is not good in my opinion i don't want to come i'm gonna just be straight up yep yeah and and i get the question all the time hey you guys should let hookah in absolutely not yeah or you should put a pool table in here oh no no you know we have a i don't want to ever see a pool table in the cigar lounge folks i'm just going to say that's just me yeah i'm snotty though and you know it's not like i i like shooting pool too but of course this is this is i consider this more of a traditional cigar lounge where we all are here relaxing hanging out smoking cigars enjoying each other's camaraderie brotherhood and we do do entertainment just to spice it up you know we do a dj on friday nights we do live jazz on saturday nights uh we do stuff like the smoke and stroke stuff is that gonna be your first smoking stroke no it's actually the second okay so that means you're doing it again that means it must have been went really well it worked really well and the beauty of it is and i'm big on this uh my wife smokes cigars okay and in my humble opinion there's nothing sexier than a woman who smokes a cigar right i said that so i said the same thing the beauty of the smoking stroke is that it attracts a lot of new or novice cigar smokers that are ninety nine point nine percent female so they come in yeah i was gonna ask that so it's a totally different you're not getting necessarily just the brothers coming uh nope it's almost all women so they enjoy themselves the first time smoking some of them some of them yeah okay yeah and we've got a lot of stuff for first-time smokers i typically i have a uh the same play i run with somebody who's never smoked a cigar especially okay so we've got a lot of the flavored stuff where we start them at and then a lot of the light creamy stuff you move them on and that's that's right that's how you introduce someone properly yeah you just got to be careful because then i introduced my wife to uh league of nines and now all she wants to smoke is ligas which is an expensive problem for me sounds like a pretty cool thing yeah yeah it is cool and they all the ladies have a blast there was a couple gentlemen who did it as well but it literally it was 95 or better now you know when people see this podcast all of a sudden when the brothers hear that oh the ladies oh it happened that night it happened that night they all popped in and so it was a bunch of women's painting and smoking and a bunch of men on the corners looking like okay i see you creeps but it was a great turnout and the gal who puts it on she does a fantastic job did you participate you get a little pain i was actually out of town when they did it so this time i i'm gonna be around i might you right there yeah you know i can't i can't even draw a stick but you know i at least give it a whirl that's nice you don't have any business partners really i guess probably other than your wife is probably your closest this is fine pretty much okay so you're really doing your thing man i think i like two for folks and i'm gonna get to the cocktails in a second but i actually had some uh food that night and man you guys actually okay it's a you're you're our actual restaurant too as far as what you're saying so we're categorized as a restaurant okay we're the only people in douglas county currently where you can smoke drink and eat indoors okay and they literally had to pull out the bylaws of douglas county and write an amendment and for me to do this and that was no small feat i'd like to say you know people in the right and hot places man there's a certain gentleman that helped me okay amazingly um if it wasn't for him it wouldn't have came together uh because they didn't want me to do it okay uh i think a lot of this is a different world though hopefully they understood that eventually they eventually they did and they see it now but when you're we're so far out of the city we're 15 plus miles out of city what i think it was is they thought lounge club so now they're concerned about uh do i really want to do the club do i want to allow a club in here yeah because this is not an area that wants a club i can tell you that now yeah so i think that's that was a real concern in douglas county was when you said lounge they automatically change gears to he's trying to open a club and that just wasn't the case and now our average i guess customer is 40 plus years old established this culture has grown folks culture oh yeah it's not you don't see any kids in this there's no we don't let you wear your your pants around your ankles we don't let you cuss and carry on and none of that stuff so now that they see what my vision was i think they're happy that they made the decision to let me try and do it out here and i understand it's no pun or jab against them i would have been nervous too if i wasn't abreast on what the cigar cigar culture was that makes sense that makes sense yeah so um yeah but yeah because yeah we none of us i don't think any of us had a healthy respect i know i did even just when i started stickman until i it wasn't until i started really i've gone to my home shops quite a bit right a couple of spots by my house but as now i started moving around the city actually moving going around the country yeah all of a sudden i see now this thing is bigger than us this lifestyle and it's a different lifestyle and everybody wants to chill it's a tranquil lifestyle i never somebody else said it the other day never seen a fight in the cigar lounge it won't it won't happen here all right god forbid i hope i never will but i don't i that's not the audience here yeah it would be a weird weird situation that would be a weird situation yeah yeah even the um there's a couple spots in town that have a younger crowd than we have for sure but even in those spots i i wouldn't anticipate any type of conflict or anything like that yeah um it's something calming soothing about smoking a cigar yeah you got to really try and piss somebody off to get them riled up and then you got the cocktails here man you got a nice little cocktail menu you talked about the old-fashioned that yep which you have your own barrel which i'm very impressed with what other cocktails are kind of so we do a lot of like uh side cars like hennessy side cars cognac side cars we do a lot of straight pours i have an extensive extremely extensive bourbon lift i'm checking it out i'm just as passionate about bourbon as i am cigars okay so um so we can do a tasting here then oh yeah let's talk about it we'll talk about that yeah so i'm planning some tasting some tastings and some cigar players we're just a little tearing night yeah all right and i so i work and strive hard to find the really hard to get bourbons so i've got all the eh tailors all the wellers oh you got the big boys happy that's good yeah um yeah pappy here yeah yeah yeah yeah and it's so hard to find man yeah tell me about it yeah so i i fight hard to get those things in um because you know it sets you kind of apart if you can come in and get a drink that you can't get anywhere else folks you can get happies here help help that's right there i'm gonna send some people your way yeah and we do the same thing we try and get the hard hard hard to get uh cigars as well looks like your popular stick here what's this what do people tend to gravitate towards here changes quite frequently right now we can't keep the andalusian bull of course so um so i i can't even get and illusion bull today the last four or five got sold last night that thing is so hard to find yeah some people don't even put them out in some lounges they just kind of tuck them away request only kind of that's it but you know i want everybody to have at least the opportunity to try it um if we're being candid again i um i'm a bigger fan of the chapter one and chapter two from lmd than i am the bull okay okay nothing against the bull the bill is a great yeah um i mean it's got a legendary status at this point yeah yeah and here's the thing lfd is not stupid if you get if you find something and make it hard to get people want it more that's right right so that's kind of the following that they have right now but uh like i said if you're a fan of the bull you should try the chapter one and chapter two chapter one and chapter two i'm gonna go find it yeah they're fantastic you have a carrot you care i carry them you got it today yeah that might be my next smoke then let's do it all right get my next one let's do it all right do you have a house stick here no we we used to have a house stick um but we're in the process of trying to find somebody else to do our house stick okay um so it's gonna be something special if i bring it okay bring it back in so i uh you took the words out on my when you do a house dick it's going to be serious here we go work with somebody put a nice blend together that's your blend and now you're not talking about just going on private label so you're going to do something special yeah i'm chatting with a few different uh manufacturers about making my way down to uh nicaragua going to the homeland right so and i'm a much bigger fan of nicaragua and tobacco than any other tobacco it's just my palette but i would definitely be hopefully in the first part of this year make my way down there and uh sit with some folks and see if we can put something together okay so it'll be fantastic i can actually wait now that's something you think we'll see in 2021 yes it'll be this year i don't know when but it'll definitely be this year okay all right so when you pair your sticks then you your sounds like are you doing always typically doing a mixed cocktail you just going straight bourbon sounds like yourself well i i love a straight bourbon pour but i own a bar so i try not to do straight bourbon pours until after six or seven at night you start at three o'clock with straight bourbon i know you're in trouble you're right yeah we at least waited until like four yeah so yeah it's uh i i would i would prefer straight bourbon um but just to play the long game throughout the day i start with either a um old-fashioned that's really the only thing i drink is either a straightforward bourbon or an old-fashioned drink you do a single ball seven because i'm a single ball guy myself i don't i carry a lot of scotch but i don't drink a lot of skies the only scotches i like are like a macallan uh double barrel 12 year which is real bourbonny anyway it so um but i'm not a big fan of uh pete like any of the people yeah sometimes the pee can get too heavy for me personally even though i love it it gets a little peaty yeah yeah i'm just not a fan of that taste but yeah there's nothing nothing better than a a good bourbon uh straight port like one of my favorites is elmer t lee which we have okay uh okay i love an elmer t lee i'm coming here just to sit man i'll say puff stuff but i might have to just come here exactly yeah so an elmer chili and a and a good cigar life is good you know that's a perfect recipe for a good day and how long have you been smoking personally so truth be told i've only i've been smoking about six years oh wow that's a relatively nervous yeah yeah you're well i'm impressed you know your [ __ ] for somebody yeah you've been doing it six years you know when i decided i was gonna you know engulf myself into the culture i started reading a bunch of books and researching and studying and uh fell more in love with cigars and the culture okay and um leaning on guys like chris harper okay some of my other reps to give me a a brief education on everything um so yeah i'm in the grand scheme i'm a new smoker okay um i just fell in love with it i'm i'm a motorcycle guy so i ride harley's and one of my buddies kimbo i i accredit him with him putting my first cigar in my hand and the first one i smoked well must have been crap because i was like oh this might not be it he was like well that's just not the one for you your palate might be blah blah you know he gave me another couple of them and i finally found you though yeah yeah yeah you know and i finally found one that i just absolutely fell in love with and if uh a shameless plug for them it's uh esteban carreras chupacabra oh that's a nice stick man yeah so um yeah that was the one that really grabbed me from the very beginning and i still smoke at least three or four of them a week oh wow yeah okay so it's uh one of my favorites okay all right i'm going to get with that yeah now i'm taller man because i i saw the cheaper copper last time i almost got it but i said nah but now i'm back so if i'm smoking tonight i'll get one to go yeah absolutely so you're not always at the cigar lounge i know all right what do you do man when you're not here man what yeah you ride hardly yeah yeah so i'm a harley cat i got an old school 67 camaro ss so i spend time with her oh yeah you do all the work yourself nope okay yeah i uh i let professionals be professionals i just uh when i'm not in my cigar lounge i'm in somebody else's cigar lounge you know i spend a ton of time at the patio i spend a ton of time with conrad somebody in the past telling me that you and your wife come through on a regular almost every week or something huh yeah i was there uh i was there on sunday okay yeah i spent a couple hours with them um i spent a lot of time at fellowship with cj okay yeah i usually every sunday morning i go to brunch with cj and uh at fellowship test cj to look good with the stickman man i've been trying to reach out to those cats maybe you can get me on and get an intro for me well not everybody likes to be on camera okay so that might be cj you can designate somebody you don't have to do it find that bar do it all right there you go sounds like i gotta go talk about that's it yeah but they're great guys um the thing about i guess when you start smoking cigars you don't want to go a lot of places where you can't smoke cigars no you don't uh chris yes man appreciate it awesome stick thank you sir [Music] i'll do it take care of yourself all right um yeah so the funny thing about when you start smoking cigars you don't want to go places where you can't smoke cigars dude so i'm speaking about i'm not right now yeah i know if i walk into a bar and i'm having drinks it sure would be nice to have a cigar but if you can't you're like uh let's go somewhere even some of the places during the uh summertime they only let you smoke them on the patio sometimes that's so that's just wrong yeah um so yeah i just typically if i'm not here working i'm either at home with the wife on the motorcycle or at somebody else's cigar okay you know you're not a golfer then oh no i don't i have i'm a man of very little patience out with nature you're just a glut for punishment that that may be it that may be it so um you're right in your harleys you got your camaro doing your thing and before you as a business person i mean have you already said you're on the bar before have you always been just an entrepreneur is that when you have you ever like done the corporate thing you just kind of always i have i've done the corporate thing and uh at this point in my life i couldn't imagine punching somebody else's clock right so i um there's nothing against anybody that does punch a clock in your space it works for you it just doesn't work for me um i've always been an entrepreneur ever since i was young i was i'm a marine so i went straight out of high school so i went straight into the marines and as soon as i got out of the marines i started trying to figure out how to work for myself okay um so i've had a plethora of different businesses from a recording studio to a landscape business to a construction company to flip house flipping houses to a bar to this bar so i've done a number of things but i'm just in love with running my own business okay and that comes with a ton of headaches or it does it does but i'd rather have i'd rather manage my own headaches than trying to manage somebody else's headaches yes and i'd rather make my own money than make somebody else a whole bunch of money i agree with you i couldn't agree more yeah um so yeah i'm an entrepreneur through and through um i don't think i could ever [Music] i guess work for somebody in a traditional nine to five punch clock so somebody just takes the guidelines out of somebody that wanted to be an entrepreneur and they came to you and said hey man brian give me some little advice what you know what would you tell them uh prepare yourself for twice as much work as you've ever done yeah and we're not just saying physical labor it's mental stress physical stress um time because the time that this place commands from me is incredible um sacrifice you know you sacrifice home life and you got to make sure your mate is prepared for that dude i see our instagram post but we we i started we had a post this week i had a podcast did about a month ago with cedric dunston a fat ass collection yeah and he had a quote that we actually put out on instagram he said the hardest thing about being an entrepreneur is not getting trying not to get divorced or figuring out how not to get divorced and it started so much my wife looked at me sideways that's yeah that's but that's true yeah because the time and dedicate even with stigma nothing like this but just this this is the fun part then going back and putting it all together and editing everything that takes time and ever just building the relationships and managing everything it's not easy well and i think people they see me in here and they see the time and sacrifice and dedication that it takes on my end but a lot of the time they miss the sacrifice and dedication and support that my wife provides right so without daddy wouldn't it'd be hard to get it done oh i mean i wouldn't truthfully you don't have children at home no i have a 21 year old okay all right so you passed the tweet yeah yeah yeah um but she uh i wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her and i wouldn't be nearly as successful here if it wasn't for her that's a beautiful thing she's not involved in the dale day-to-day operations i mean she's always looking you know in the system and you know asking questions and finagling behind the scenes but so she's happy she's she's contributing she has her own massively successful career okay excellent yeah so she uh she's busy with that but when she has down time she helps a lot behind the scenes and just putting up with my [ __ ] as a full-time job and besides the uh the the the challenge you had early on with your employees what you seem to have worked out and gotten that straight um you know we you know is there anything that we're dealing with your customers that make it tell you i mean i spoke to a couple folks that i saw a funny video on uh instagram the other day from another lounge owner saying that you know they get tired of people coming in and touching all the cigars and sniffing this especially right now with curvy man sniffing the cigars yeah people are so gosh etiquette is a real thing i even wrote a blog article about cigar shop etiquette if there's a pet peeve about the etiquette side of it what would it be well on that same note we literally have signs in the humidor i don't know if you had seen them but there's signs hung over all all the shelves that says please only touch cigars that you intend on purchasing yes they'll lift the cigar the sign up grab three or four cigars look at them smell them stick them right back down and set the sign down so you gotta come in with your lights all day all right yep but you know there's all type of small little nuances that get on your nerves i mean i tell at least two or three people a week not to smoke black miles in here hey you got to put that out we don't allow black and mild smoke in here or cigarettes even hey man you can take it on the patio smoke it on the patio but yeah yeah it was a totally different smell yeah yeah just to totally survive in general and our and our our cigar purists don't want to smell that [ __ ] other stuff you know they get so comfortable here because we have a very inviting um atmosphere that they'll put their feet up on the table well hey my dude uh would you put your feet in here they're right on your coffee table do you do that at the little stuff like that but you know it's uh it's no ding on them i mean they they get that comfortable they forget half the time i'm like hey man can you take your feet now he's like oh my god i'm sorry man i was just i was in the zone man you know right you made the place so inviting for them that they just felt so relaxed that they could do that but you can't do that right yeah but other than that we don't have a lot of issues problems in here um we have a ton of repeat business guys and girls that we see three or four times a week even i've got some customers scooter at the bar i see almost every single day damn literally every single day wow are you fair numbers like a yeah we only have 38 lockers um but we have about 55 members because a lot of those lockers are dual or corporate memberships okay so some boxes have three people in them some boxes have two so i think okay we're right at 55 members or so okay um and the best group of guys and gals i i don't know about everybody else's members but our members are fantastic i mean they hold it down for you oh yeah these guys are in here and we talk about everything under the sun from cigar smoke to space travel you know everything in between you know and even when covet hit we would go fishing at a lake together out spaced out smoking cigars and stuff like that wow so just a good group of guys i'm lucky in the fact that they're members of mine they're customers of mine but they're also my friends okay right at this point we've built a really great circle of guys that's just an amazing group and his friends leave a comment as strangers leave his friends that's what you do here yeah i'm just very very glad and thankful for them all right well they make it happen man it's not about you know it's about you as the proprietor who set all this up and made it possible but to keep it going and make it successful it's the members it's the people that come here it's your clientele that make it special i wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them if nobody if i opened the doors a year and a half ago and nobody showed up i'd be long gone by now yeah you know and for these guys to dedicate that much time um and money you know because without the capital that they spend here this is not uh an inexpensive habit absolutely not absolutely not but it is an enjoyable habit yeah you know and everybody has advice or something they like to do it's like um some guys are car guys some guys are harley guys i know guys that have a hundred grand and they're harley you know so yeah i didn't know i could get that oh yeah it's serious okay all right all right yeah so you know you just pick what makes you happy and cigars make me happy i just happen to have a few vices old-school cars motorcycles cigars don't do it well i thought about doing a motorcycle thing probably i brought it up to my wife probably about 15 years ago and she shot that [ __ ] down real fast so that's kudos to you i have been a motor on motorcycles since in some form of fashion since 1986 um since i was a little boy but uh or you're not walking for anything so that's good well four years ago i was in a serious harley accident okay and i had a brain injury and spent a week in icu and grady damn and uh i thought i was out of here my life my wife just wouldn't let me die so she was like nope and she nursed me back to health and uh it was a a long road to recovery man oh yeah i uh yeah it was rough and i still have some effects from the accident but for the most part i'm i'm happy to be here so i can't complain there's nothing like that man when everyone if anyone has an unfortunate experience like that yeah and you all of a sudden they're faced with your own mortality yes that's some sober and [ __ ] man that really wakes you up man and you know not to get off the beaten path here but somebody pulled up because i don't remember anything for about a month and a half um i had popped my eardrum to let the cerebral fluid out and i just lost a bunch of my memory and it was a mess but somebody had pulled up to the accident scene and filmed the aftermath with me on the ground what and then found me on facebook somehow and sent me the video so it all came crashing in on me i don't even the first time i was like oh like no i wasn't ready but after uh after some yeah time i didn't remember right and that put it in context for me like what this really happened you know and it it changed my life um and it's been a struggle i mean i still struggle but it's uh it's just great that i'm still here so i'm glad you're still yeah thank you appreciate it yeah but but you know what i wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my wife she really pulled me through it and cheers to her what's your name again april april good man here obviously you're a good woman for holding them down that's awesome man that's awesome well that's what that you know she did a good job yeah you know because everybody's thankful you're here and i'm sure she's my snake that's yeah i don't get out on it much because i spend so much time here i'm about to say you're busy man yeah so um and there's a very very um what's the word i'm looking for in the near future laser or acetate will be in the works uh what within within this year location um no okay i've got a few i'm interested in okay so but it's something that's that's being cooked up right now well please keep me in the loop because i want to come cover it yeah absolutely for the opening oh yeah yeah so i hope to be open by the end of the year um i'm already positioning with a few different spots and we'll see how everything shakes loose okay um so so the b goes up you got to split your time between two different spots exactly right that's a good problem to have though yeah and you know it's uh i think with the right staff here and and we've worked hard to get where it's where it is with staff i think i'll be fine to venture off and and plow the plow the next one okay you know sorry so you took me i'm going to ask you what does the future hold for i see it but oh [ __ ] i said a but it's a saturday too so everybody look out for that i said that too is coming soon i'm assuming if i won't be too far away if you sit right here in the metro obviously oh i'll let you know when i figure it out okay i've got a few different spots and a few different ideas some local stuff but i'm also eyeing a few different spots that are a little bit further away okay but it'll be even as even more magnificent than this one um it's it's kind of like when you you build something the second time you build it you've worked out all the kinks on the first one so this next one will be even more beautiful even more well put together um i can't wait oh yeah i can't wait hey i'm sitting here kicking it everybody with my man brian t it's been awesome conversations also getting to know to tell you yeah at anybody go for it tell them how you feel about things well i just if i had one thing to say i just want to be thankful to y'all um i didn't know if this would be a success i thought it would be a success but anything is a calculated risk or a gamble and we have been bombarded by support and good people friendships love interests here i got some um they have some some matches absolutely so i'm just 100 truthfully heartfelt thankful um for the support for the business uh for the people that i've met i couldn't have asked for a better group of individuals than the people that i got and the people that spend their time with me and i truly truly mean that like no [ __ ] like i'm thankful oh wow i heard in your voice yeah yeah i hated your voice it's been it's been fantastic none of us make this journey alone man yeah that's it we got a lot of support you got your wife april you got the family here your extended family here they are lounge yeah uh and now i hope you consider stickman absolutely part of the family because we've enjoyed here and we're here to support and promote as much as possible man i appreciate it so thank you for letting us come here and invade your space a little bit no worries man i appreciate y'all giving me the opportunity uh i'm not big on on being on camera but this has been very comfortable and you've been great and i i appreciate your time uh well you're a natural man yeah well yeah so we're gonna get people to subscribe yeah and more people that have not uh been to the saudi lounge come check them out you'll get great drinks well let me stay i'm gonna stay out again great cigars first and foremost because this is a cigar a true cigar lounge so i'm gonna say that first and then number two you're gonna get some incredible drinks some great uh cocktails they have made up that are very unique to the sunday lounge and then last but not least uh y'all putting it down in the kitchen man i love the food here matter of fact after we're done i'm gonna give you a little something to nibble on myself before i get out of here today yeah so uh so hey brian t a saturday lounge reggie kimball aka stickman number one coming to you from lithia springs hey remember to always puff sip chat repeat subscribe to us on youtube our youtube channel uh google podcast apple podcast ig tv follow us wherever we'll be there i'm out peace appreciate y'all [Music] you

Channel: Puff, Sip, Chat

Views: 9,760

Keywords: Reggie Kimble, stickmen, stick men, stickmen podcast, cigar lifestyle, whiskey, cigar, cigars, craft whiskey, craft bourbon, atlanta cigar, cigar and whiskey, acere cigar lounge, operating a cigar lounge, how to open a cigar lounge, cigar lounge etiquette, running a business during COVID, cigar lounge lifestyle, cigar bar business, cigar bar, whiskey lifestyle, cigar podcast, whiskey podcast, starting a cigar lounge, opening a cigar lounge, cigar lounge business plan

Id: EwpYS72-FeI

Length: 52min 28sec (3148 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 28 2021