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Cheeseburgers In Paradise

By Golf Business posted 08-22-2016 15:40

  

Other than due to licensing technicalities, there's virtually no eatery with a 10-by-10 space in some corner that couldn’t use live music to promote dinner and bar business. Lone Tree Golf Course and Event Center, a municipally owned facility in Antioch, California, hires musicians for its Sunday champagne brunch—mostly serving a non-golf crowd—and years ago instituted a “Music by the Green” program with solo folk and pop acts playing from to 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., every other Thursday. Management has learned that performers who bring a following with them—or develop one over time—can move the revenue needle.

“It’s not uncommon to get 60 people in here to enjoy the music, on a night when the bar would otherwise be quiet,” says Abdon Aguilar, front-of-house manager for Lone Tree.  “If you haven’t offered a music night and you start one, it’s probably going to be slow at first, but it can build up nicely depending on who you get to perform.”

To get past these growing pains, Aguilar recommends setting up a rotation of acts and staying consistent with it long enough for word-of-mouth and social-media promotion to stir up interest. The problem of location (i.e., being far from the downtown areas that normally offer entertainment) can be overcome with a bit of luck and persistence, he has found. “We’re pretty well hidden away—you have to make the effort to drive out here,” says Aguilar, “but eventually customers will get past that.”

The Ranch Golf Club in Southwick, Massachusetts, offers a heavy schedule of live music on an outdoor patio space that fills up so reliably that patrons are advised to reserve seats in advance. Some peak-season weeks, the course—which is in a semi-rural area—books musical acts two successive nights, Thursday and Friday. One featured performer, Noah Lis, even appeared on the NBC series, “The Voice.” A June-through-August live-music series called “Sounds at Sunset” brings after-golf and walk-in business to Rush Creek Golf Course in the Minneapolis suburb of Maple Grove. It’s one of several Twin Cities golf courses that feature live music in the warm-weather season.

Riverside Golf Club in Chehalis, Washington, has less frequent musical nights, but what they do offer is large-scale concerts on an outdoor stage. And Riverside goes one better on the live-entertainment front with “Comedy at the Course,” a monthly presentation of stand-up acts. Clearly, in the case of the outdoor venues, the weather has to cooperate and/or alternate dates must be secured.

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