Installing outdoor TV’s in smoking areas in UK Pubs and bars.

With the new law that has come in the past 18 months, where no one can smoke in a “closed public areas” such as a pub, office or restaurant, this forced businesses to look at how they operate their business.

Since the recent recession hit, 1 UK bar closes every day due to lack of customers and this has the industry thinking, “how they can keep their customers longer and make more money from them?”

An independent pub realised that with the new football season approaching in September 2008 that they would put a TV outdoors, for the customers who smoked. This worked well as the pub already had an external smoking shelter. So they pondered the idea to put a waterproof TV out side, the televisions that were used were 42” LCD and IP65 (waterproof – washed down with a high pressure water jet). When the quotes came in the prices ranged from £3,899 (US $5,592) to £5,479 (US $7,999).

Speak to your customers.

Now with this large investment for an independent bar in an economic slow down, the owner of the bar decided to ask his smoking customers, “if they had an outdoor TV would they spend more time at the bar?” A resounding “Yes”, was the answer.

Plan of action.

So the landlord decided to look at the options open to him and found a company based near Cambridge that manufactured special housings for televisions, these housings protected TV’s in Industrial applications from dust, fluid, theft and abuse, they also supplied the Outdoor Digital Signage market with protective LCD enclosures that provided vandal proof protection for the plasma or LCD TV.

The NEMA 4X (IP65) LCD enclosures would accommodate any 42” TV, so the landlord wasn’t tied to a particular manufacturer, so he shopped round for a cost effective TV and found that he could have a 42” LCD television housed in an LCD enclosure and fitted outdoors for £1,200 (US $1,752).

Now the landlord after speaking to the HDTV case manufacturer, decided to look at putting digital advertisements on the TV, promoting the “daily menu specials”, as well as local taxi’s, etc – this paid off!

The Results!

The landlord placed the orders and at the end of August 2008, the outdoor TV and enclosure were installed. He had already approached local businesses and had sold 36 advertising slots at only £50 (US $73) paying for the entire installation of the outdoor TV.

The landlord studied the sales from September 08 to November 08 and compared them to the previous year, bearing in mind that the UK was in the worst recession in decades during 2008. The bars turnover had increased by 27%, whilst his profit had increased 21.24%!

The results meant that more people where eating and spending longer at the bar than previously. Most Saturdays are jammed packed, with mid week games becoming ever more popular, proving that it was a wise investment.

Future Opportunities.

With the 2010 FIFA World Cup just around the corner, this is a fantastic opportunity to increase your businesses exposure, by installing outdoor TV’s, people will always remember who won the world cup and where they were when they saw it.