“That’s not a plan; that’s a concept.”
“It’s a start.” He pulled out his phone. “What about social media? Maya’s been posting—”
“Three times. She’s posted three times over the course of a month. We have forty-seven followers, and six of those are accounts owned by . . . wait for it . . . Maya herself.”
“Okay, so we post more.”
“And say what? ‘Hey, we exist, please come drink here’?”
“Isn’t that what all marketing is? And isn’t that precisely our message?”
I scribbled “post more” onto my pad, then dropped my head to the bar with athunk. “We’re going to fail.”
“We’re not going to fail.”
“Our grand opening was last night, and in case you missed the corporate-wide memo I sent earlier today, it wasn’t exactly grand. We had maybe thirty people total.Thirty.On a Friday night in Ybor. The ice cream shop had more foot traffic.”
“They put gummies in their mix.”
“No, they don’t,” I groaned against the wood.
“What if we had a pot gummy dessert? I bet the boys would—”
“Mark, please. I’m serious.”
I heard him sigh right before his hand fell onto my shoulder. “Finn, relax. It was one night. People don’t know we exist yet.”
“Right!” I lifted my head. “People don’t know we exist. How do wemakethem know we exist?”
Mark thought for a moment. “We could do some events?”
I scribbled “events.”
“What kind of events?”
“I don’t know. What do other bars do? Game nights? Trivia? Theme nights?”
I wrote every word. “Okay. Think theme. What kind of events would bring people to a gay sports bar?”
“Sports.”
“Thank you, Obi-Wan. Thank God you’re notour only hope.”
Mark chuckled. “That makes you Leia. Where are the cherry Danishes you wear over your ears?”
“They’re cinnamon buns, fuck you very much.”
“My bad.” He grinned and held up his palms.
“Okay, sports-themed events. But which sports? And what kind of events? We have TVs to watch, but is that enough? When? How do we compete with every other bar showing the same games?”
“We make our sports things better, make it more fun.” Mark was getting that look in his eye, the one that meant he was about to have either a brilliant idea or a terrible one. “What if we did watch parties? For big games?”
“Every bar does watch parties, and not just for big games. They do them for every game.”
“Not like we would. We could make the whole thing an event. Rod could make special menu items. You could come up with fancy drink specials. And . . .” He thought a moment. “Maybe we do some kind of contest or giveaway.”
I was writing this down. “Okay. That’s not terrible. When’s the next game?”
