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How Drinking Establishments Can Offer More Than Just Beer to Their Communities

Everybody loves their local watering holes - bars, clubs, pubs, and breweries - for their main service (providing the community with refreshing libations), but drinking establishments play a much more important role in their communities than just slinging drinks. As a gathering place for all types of patrons, bars give people a backdrop to support their communities in a variety of ways. French Quarter Phantoms outline a few ideas below.

By Offering a Place to Fundraise

BizFluent notes that if you want to make money for a good cause, enlisting the help of a bar (or a few bars) should be one of the top options on your list. Most bar owners will be happy to host charity events in their establishments. Not only are they thrilled to participate in the betterment of their own community, but it will also get people into the bar and boost sales.

There’s nothing wrong with using the profit motive to help encourage fundraising participation. For example, Rochester Mills promotes fundraisers like the Bark & Brew, which features live music, inflatables, carnival games, Leader Dog-in-training demonstrations, the proceeds from which benefit Leader Dogs for the Blind.

If you want to host a charity night at a local drinking establishment, Kaboom! points out that you can raise money in a variety of ways, including taking on sponsors. You can also charge a cover at the door; work with the owner to donate a percentage of the night’s profits to a good cause; hold a raffle with items donated by other local businesses, and set up donation jars at the ends of the bar to encourage extra giving. Or you can do all the above in one event!

If you want to get really creative, try hosting a pub crawl in which you and your friends get sponsored to “crawl” from pub to pub, drinking at each establishment. Think of it as a charity 5K race, but with beer.

By Providing a Showcase for Local Talent

Drinking establishments have a long history of being the ideal place for local talent to show their skills, make a little money, and get people talking. That tradition is alive and well in today’s bar scene - in fact, there are more opportunities for different types of artists to share their art at bars than ever before. This can even bring in people who don’t drink, whether they’re staying sober for the evening to be the designated driver or they’re in recovery from alcoholism.

Whether it’s a local visual artist hanging their work on the bar’s walls, a local musician or band playing a show, a poet giving a reading on an open mic night, or a comedian trying out his new material for the locals, drinking establishments serve a vital purpose for the arts communities in any city. With its thriving art and music scene, New Orleans is an exceptional locale for such collaboration.

By Giving the Community a Safe Space to Socialize

Successful communities have thriving “third spaces”, or places where people gather other than home and work. These include restaurants, parks, museums, community centers, and of course, drinking establishments.

Bars are one of the few places in cities and towns that appeal to such a wide range of people, from all walks of life. The young and the old, the rich and the poor, the white and the black, and everyone in-between knows the importance of a bar as a meeting place. The socialization that a bar provides can encourage people to be closer with their fellow man. The personal health benefits of socialization cannot be overstated. Being social helps people, improves your mental health, and helps you lead a happier life, and that includes getting people together for unique and fun walking tours like French Quarter Phantoms’ haunted tours.

Bars, breweries, pubs, and clubs play a vital role in the communities they inhabit. The role of giving people a place to relax, unwind, and feel like they are part of the community as a whole is a given, but drinking establishments offer so much more. As respected local institutions, they provide a place for people to do good for local causes, as well as a place for creative expression. Why not find an establishment in your community to start supporting?

French Quarter Phantoms ghost tours will send a chill up your spine as you learn some really cool and creepy things about New Orleans. Tours begin and end at The VooDoo Lounge. Guests twenty-one and older are treated to BOGO hurricanes in free souvenir cups.

Don’t be scared – reach out to French Quarter Phantoms for more info today!