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How Do Strip Clubs Work? [Business Revenue Model]

A strip club is a place where strippers offer adult entertainment, mainly in the form of striptease or other enticing dances. These clubs tend to adopt a nightclub or bar style, and can also adopt a theatre or cabaret-style. However, it is just a bar with a stage where women dance and remove their clothing.

Different parts of the world have varying laws in terms of stripping, alcohol, and sex work. Owing to this variance in laws, everything concerning strip clubs tends to vary a lot. A good number of clubs are striptease only. Some clubs’ striptease might allow touching the woman’s body, while other clubs do not.

Some clubs will also offer full service if that’s legal. Or they might choose to separate the full-service brothel upstairs from the strippers. In some other areas where it is illegal, women might offer full service secretly, but anyone involved can be arrested if they are caught.

Strip clubs are usually situated in buildings that are converted from bars, restaurants, or warehouses. Have it in mind that the original layout of the building tends to influence the physical layout and design of the club. However, no matter what the floor plan looks like, there are certain features every strip club is expected to have to be considered a strip club.

They include performers (strippers), a floor area where customers will constellate, and some form of staging for the striptease performance. Larger or more luxurious gentlemen’s clubs will also boast of features that cost millions of dollars to install and maintain.

How Does a Strip Club Work?

Just like it was noted above, strip clubs in the United States are mostly structured as nightclubs or bars. However, irrespective of size, name, or location, strip clubs can be full nude, topless, or bikini. They open at all hours, depending on regulations and revenue.

For strip clubs, there are numerous ways to deliver entertainment to customers, and fee structures will also vary between clubs. A cover charge (entry fee also known as a door charge) is usual at many clubs, and the amount can also vary depending on the day of visit, time of day, gender, and other factors.

Dancers in these clubs are generally classified as independent contractors. They make a greater percentage of their income from giving lap dances or VIP dances. But if not legal, customer tips, at the stage, will have to be a dancer’s major means of income.

Note that the main job of dancers is to entertain the club patrons in exchange for money and there are allowed to leverage every resource at their disposal to do so. In most clubs, dancers are charged a “stage fee” or “house fee” to work a specific shift. A good number of clubs also take a percentage of fees charged for each private dance.

Strip clubs that are open for more than just the nighttime hours will have to charge reduced door charges or no entry fee at all during the daytime. Some might also incorporate an inconsistent or shift work schedule for their entertainers and staff.

What is the Daily Operation of a Strip Club Like?

The essential components of managing a strip club will surely vary depending on the management style, club location, size, and theme or concept. A strip club business owner or manager will be someone who doesn’t mind hard work and can also have fun while on the job.

A strip club can be a very profitable venture depending on the club’s size, location, and popularity. Strip club owners or managers are expected to be “night” people, someone who wouldn’t mind staying up all night and sleeping in the day. As a strip club owner, you might also need to be awake during some of the regular business hours to take care of the things like; ordering supplies, making bank deposits and getting change from the bank.

Most strip club owners tend to become somehow famous in the city where the club is located since they go around town constantly inviting people to come to their club. Well-to-do strip clubs usually open at 11 am sharp. Bartenders and servers arrive a few minutes before opening to get dressed.

The DJ arranges his equipment and mic, the house-mom puts together her styling tools and makeup in the locker room, waiting to greet the strippers. A few moments after the club opens, the lights are turned off, good-looking women walk around naked in very high heels, flaunting themselves to hungry customers who order beers and lunch at the bar.

Nighttime at a popular strip club can always be flashy, chaotic, loud, and packed with customers and over 3 dozen dancers, depending on the club. Nighttime in a strip club is all about the hustle and sometimes strippers don’t even greet customers before they ask them to pay for a dance.

Daytime patrons, like nighttime patrons, are solely there to meet beautiful women and fill a basic need for intimacy, physical touch, togetherness, release. While both the day and night shift offers the platform to be intimate, the day shift atmosphere — and the men there — are extremely unique.

Have it in mind that the day shift rarely sees a flashy young crowd ready to splash $2,000 on a champagne bottle service or make it rain hundred-dollar bills on the girls dancing on stage, all these are more or less reserved for the nighttime.

Daytime customers are men eager to take a recess from their stressful workloads. They might be friends celebrating a birthday or a promotion, or even out-of-towners traveling for work looking to avoid eating lunch alone. A strip club is genuinely a platform to make a personal connection with anyone, to ask questions about each other’s lives. It is all about intimacy and conversation.

What is the Business Model of a Strip Club?

Strip clubs are profit-oriented businesses like restaurants and other retail establishments. Strippers and staff are the main customer service representatives in the club environment. Strippers are their major vehicle to induce customers to spend time and money in the establishment.

However, it is imperative to note that strip clubs function more or less like malls. In these establishments, dancers tend to pay “rent” to work at the club; they are not regarded as employees or contractors. Note that they tend to resemble barbers and taxi drivers; they pay a portion of what they earn to the house and bank the rest.

It simply means that the objective of every club is to have as many dancers as possible at any given time, especially since the more entertainers present in the building the more money the club makes. However, most often, the best dancers don’t like working in overcrowded clubs.

They prefer to work in a place where they can get a steady stream of customers – especially customers eager to pay for private dances. The more entertainers on the floor, the more competition and the harder it is to make sizable money. Owing to that, successful strip clubs have mastered the delicate act of not having too many dancers but also not missing out on their potential revenue.

Also, have it in mind modern strip clubs also generate income from sales of food and beverage. If you can serve alcohol, you will also make substantial money from the liquor sales.

Running a strip club business is like handling any other bar or lounge business; you have to increase volumes and prices to grow business income but you don’t want your clients to get extremely drunk that they cause problems or can’t function.

Most often, clubs charge an entrance fee or cover charge. They tend to do this when there is a high enough demand to get into the club. However, depending on the time of the day, day of the week, season, and other factors, a club may have a very minimal, high, or no entrance fee. Owners and managers, without doubts, like it when conditions are right to charge a fee.