Ever hear a nice looking stripper say I could have made more at Burger King?

oops, I actually posted the above on this thread. My appologies for the double post. FOUNDER, webmaster, or whoever, feel free to delete it.

I think I mentioned on another post the situation with the 1819 club in DC, but it really does pertain to this discussion. The short version of what is going on is this. The old owner couldn't make it work, and was apparently forced to sell the place at auction. An investment group bought it and wants to keep it a strip club. They hired a (former) ATF as one of the managers and another dancer as the other. While they were waiting for the zoning board to approve their renovations they kept the club open as-is. The two managers, both former dancers started to do something interesting. They sided with the dancers and refused to schedule 12 dancers and 4 waitresses for a weeknight shift in a dead one stage club. They also gradually got rid of some girls who needed to go. Gradually, the place was becoming the club to work at for the dancers. They might only get three shifts a week, but they would make money because the managers made sure there weren't dancer to customer ratios of 2 to 1. The quality of the girls went up, the customers got word and started to come back, more customers, more money, more and better dancers. The place is closed for renovations now, but I'll be interested to see what happens whe they re-open. A lot of girls went to work there knowing it was going to close soon just so they could be on the list to call when it re-opened.

Yoda, I'm well aware that's how they think. And this strategy may make sense in the short run but in the long run it's a disaster for the club. They piss off their best dancers, who leave and the best customers follow them out the door. They end up being a second-rate club with dumpy dancers and cheap customers who are only interested in extras. Nobody is spending any money in my club anymore. The last 2 times I was there I didn't see anyone buy a private dance and no one was tipping the dancers on stage. That can't last very long. This time last year the place was pretty busy.

FONDL: How can they be so dumb? Greed and short-sightedness. Strip club owners and managers are not MBA's. In fact, most of the time the managers are just guys who started as bouncers and worked their way up. Strip clubs have always and will always be run on the premiss that, "if you don't want to dance here anymore, some other girl will". Unfortunately, by and large, this is the truth. Many of my favs have changed clubs one or more times since I've known them. It's all about collecting as many house fees per shift as possible for these places. As I've said before, once the club makes their money off of a dancer for the shift, they really don't care if she goes home broke.

FONDL, it is happening everywhere. Unless the club is part of a bigger company, they tend to hire their buddies to run the clubs.

Some of the management that I have met has never had any formal business training. So any business concept is foreign to most of the managers.

I see them put up signs of a big event in the club. Okay, how do you get new customers when you announce a big event in your own club? You don't. The sad thing is that they could have placed some of the signs on the outside of the building and that could have gotten some new customers.

The dancers pay house, so managers do not care growing their clientele, just more dancers. This is bad for the dancers and eventually bad for the club.

I was with my current fav yesterday afternoon at her club (GC in Baltimore) for 2 hours and never got to see her dance on stage because there were so many girls working. She was so pissed off at the number of girls working that she could hardly see straight. She told me that many of the new girls are breaking the rules because it's the only way they can make any money, and it's putting a lot of pressure on the others. She also said that none of the girls are able to keep their regulars anymore because the customers all like to try the new girls. This club is really exploiting their dancers and the quality of dancer there is going downhill fast. I think this club is on the verge of losing a lot of their best dancers. They've already lost a lot of customers. How can they be so dumb?

Last night I did something that I rarely do. I bought a couple of mercy dances from a fav of mine in a no-contact club. It was 11pm; she had only been on stage once all night because there where so many girls working and she hadn't even made tip-out yet. I don't usually buy dances in this club during the daytime because the house gets half of the $20 fee. I prefer to buy drinks for the girls and tip them for their time-they get more money that way. At night however the dancer gets to keep it all. She's a beautiful girl, though dances at this club are pretty sterile. Still, it was worth the $50 just to see the smile on her face... the thank you and the grateful hug weren't bad either!

I have seen clubs so slow that after house and tip out the Girl is lucky to leave with $10...

Why I agree that many times I have walked in and seen nothing that interests me, I wonder how much of it is because we have favorites already and are unwilling to change. Alsois it the older we get the more we want someone closer to our age??? If you are above 40, perhaps having the early 30ish dancer is more attractive than the younger 20 year old????

As for fewer is better, I think Abbie hits a good point. I recently went to a place midnight Sunday and a week later on Monday midnightish. The place was dead compared to even 5 o'clock on a week day. Only 1 of 3 stages going, which if they had more they probably wouldn't have made money on one of the stages. Only 9 girls working including 2 bar maids and a waitress. All the girls were dancing one an hour they made rounds dancing, each girl taking 10-20 dollars off the stage dance. Plus, they were giving private dances. Most of the ladies went home despite the slowness with 300-400 before the tipout. Now that's not a lot compared to the Fri/Sat, but the ladies did respectable.

Abbie, I hope it works. The club I go to regularly is heading donwhill. They spent a bundle remodeling a few years ago and the result is fantastic, the place looks like a private club for millionaires. Unfortunately it's priced that way too, which doesn't go with the blue collar neighborhood and town that it's in. So they've done exactly the wrong thing, they've hired a lot more girls so the quality went down, and they've raised prices to chase away more customers. The result is that few of the girls are making any money. The club probably still is but one has to wonder for how long. They've also made the private areas more private, which suggests that extras aren't far behind. Which will chase away the best girls including my fav. I think a lot of clubs today are following this downhill pattern. I hope yours isn't one of them. But if they over invest as my club did, look for bad things to follow.

There is an interesting situation locally with one of our clubs. It was recently (about a year ago now I guess) sold at auction because the owner couldn't make it work. An investment group that wanted to keep it a strip club bought it with plans to completely renovate. One of the other things they did was hire one of my ATF dancers as a manager. They also hired another former dancer as the other manager (both these girls are sharp, know their buisness, are college grads, and nearing 30 years old, so it wasn't a case of trying to get laid). When the new owners had problems getting the renovations through the zoning board they decided to keep the club open as-is to at least defer some cost. Something very interesting started to happen. A lot of dancers wanted to go work there, and the quality started to go up. The new managers (both former dancers) refused to schedule more than 5 or 6 dancers and one waitress on weeknights, so in a one stage club everyone was making some money. They got rid of a few dancers who needed to go, recruited among their friends, and for a while it was steadily improving. The club has now closed for the renovations, and is due to open soon. It will be interesting to see how they compete in the stagnant stripclub market around here. A lot of dancers were quitting their clubs to go there even though they knew it was closing. They wanted to get their foot in the door so they'd be called when it re-opened. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. Management can make a huge difference.

Fortunately I know when my favs work. If I'm driving 50 miles I make damn sure that the girl I'm going to see is going to be there. These days, with the diluted talent pool, I can be in and out of a club in 15 minute if I don't see a fav working. Sadly, it's important to remember here that the club owners have brough this on themselves through thier own greed. The club makes money off of every dancer on a shift even if the dancer doesn't make a dime. One of my regular daytime haunts used to have 5 to seven girls working during the dayshift and they where all knock-outs. They all made money and, even on slow days, did ok. Lately, they have 12 to 15 working and about half ar gorgeous, a few are ok and some are just horrid. Even the horrid ones pay a house fee and buy drinks during their shift. Management doesn't care if they only make $20 all day as long as they pay their house fee. More girls means less stage shows for each so even the pretty girls now make less money.

Shadowcat, I haven't been to a club at night in many years. The clubs I go to serve a pretty decent lunch. I usually meet my favorite for lunch, we eat, talk, do our thing, and I'm gone by 3 pm. It's by far the best time to be in a club because no one else is there, there's no hustle, and the VIP rooms are empty, we're all alone. It's fun having a club all to yourself.

You hear this comment about how they could have made more at burger king freequently after thet have danced for RL. His five bucks dosent seem to strech as far as it used to.

I agree completely with the last 2 posts. It's getting harder all the time to find a dancer whom I like. As a result I only go when I know my fav is working - I call her in advance, make sure she's working, make an appointment to see her, spend all my tijme (and money) with her, then leave. The last 2 times I was in her club, which is a fancy gentlemen's club, there wasn't another dancer there who interested me at all, and there were a lot of girls working. If my fav hadn't been there I would have left without spending a dime other than for one drink. Standards have declined and the number of girls is up. As a result it's hard for any of them to make a decent buck. The place is going down hill and I expect extras to arrive soon if they aren't already there.

I wanna give Yoda an AMEN. I've seen too many young strippers lately who figure that all they have to do is get up on stage naked and the money should come. Sure I'll tip, once. Most of the smart ones realize that you need to entertain to get the money. There is always a threshold of looks in stripping, and the absolute knockouts always make money, but other than that I've always noticed that it is all about personality and interaction with the customers. If you can get $200 out of a guy in a night and send him home without feeling like he's been used you are a pro. If a guy resents slipping a single into the g-string for a lame stage dance, you may as well work at Burger King. I also think that too many of these unskilled newbies are accelerating the decline of the clubs. I won't go anymore unless there is a dancer who I know is entertaining and I'm gonna like. I used to just go 3 or 4 times a month and assume there would be someone I'd like.

Actualy, since business has slowed many clubs have relaxed their hiring standards. This has led to an influx of newbie strippers who don't really have the bodies or the proper mindset to be strippers. These newbies where not around when a dancer could earn $1500 to $2000 weekly. They are thrilled if they walk out of the club with $150 in their pocket for a nights work. It's much better money than they could make working at Wal Mart or a fast food joint. Add to this the trendy view held by some young ladies-egged-on by MTV and Tabloid TV-that stripping is "cool". The bad economy and a general lowering of the bar where sexuality is concerned has effected SC's in many negative ways.

Cue the porn baseline as the girl at the counter suggestively asks "Would you like anything else? Something hot and sweet, or some special sauce?"

Can you imagine walking into a fast food burger joint and seeing a "stripper type" girl working there? Hey, that sounds like a great stage costume, a gal in a super short Burger King outfit, high heels and wiggling her buns. But then, Paris Hilton already does that...

I think the Burger King/MacDonalds thing is a slight exaggeration that makes the point I was trying to explain at far too great length. It's worth putting up with a lot of crap for a $1500/week income. When the ammount of crap stays the same but the pay drops it's time to find an easier job that pays less. The other great truth is that despite what some in the general public think strippers don't make a ton of money.

How many dancers do you know who have quit dancing to work at Burger King? I don't know of any either. There's no question that in many areas it's getting harder to make as much as they used to because the number of clubs and dancers is growing faster than the number of customers. And rising prices and bigger tip-outs is making it worse for many girls. Plus at least around here the summer is the slowest time of year. But on average the good ones still do pretty well. If they didn't they'd quit. It's still one of the easiest ways for an attractive girl with limited education and job skills to make some decent money. It's just not as easy as it used to be. But then what is?

I guess I should add that a different favorite mentioned day shifts are even worse, but her philosophy was some days you work just to keep your job till you hit a good shift (an attitude which many waiters and bartenders have also). When I was bartending at a resturaunt doing service bar there were some slow nights I barely cleared $100. Other nights were much better, but you still had to work them both. The problem is when the average drops too low. If you get 3 or 4 shifts a week and one is a weekend your chances of a decent week are much better. If one of those shifts is also a good night, even better. When the whole week sucks you start to look to pick up an extra shift. It's usually the same with all tipped employees. The other thing to remember is that the saving grace of tipped employees is that you declare only enough income to avoid an audit. Tax free cash goes a lot further than you'd think. If you have a sallaried job at say $75,000 a year you probably only take home $45,000 to 50,000. If a stripper can clear $1000 a week in undeclared cash her take home is better than yours. As I said above, it used to be a lot easier to clear $1000 a week than it is now, (apparently) and there is the problem. Too much competition from the internet, cable TV, and what you can see in most nightclubs now.

I have heard a similar saying, with McDonalds instead of Burger King. Not too BK out here. These are the nights, that the dancers would be very happy if they were smart enough to have developed regulars.

What I call the smart dancers will develop regulars that they will call before their shift, thus allowing for a more relaxing evening since they know that they will make some money.

No, not at Burger King but a I have had girls tell me that they could make more money bartending or waitressing than they make some nights in their club.

One of my favorites in DC confided to me that when she started stripping in the mid 1990's she was taking home about $500 a night. That's pretty good for DC where there are no private dances, but she is hot, hustles, and knows how to get tips. She says now it is a lot worse. Some weeknights she leaves with $200. If you are a good waiter at a upper end resturaunt you can make $200 on a weeknight. It seems that the decline in DC clubs is because the financial rewards are no longer there for the girls. It can be worth putting up with the crap strippers take if you are banking $1500 cash a week, but for $600, maybe not.

This particular girl didn't look that bad. She wasn't overweight and actually looked decent. I wasn't interested in a dance and told her right away. She was a bit surprised because she said she was just going to sit and talk before her night ended. I think the reaction she was getting was due to several other dancers aggressively hunting down guys trying to get a dance when almost no one wanted one. One particular dancer that made a beeline for me shortly before she came over was a bit rude too. She pushed a chair out of her way right into the knees of someone sitting close to me and then just asked me for a dance. I was drinking ice water and when I said no, she pushed my head back in a slight disgust. Lol, I think I must have accidently got some water on her when I said no thanks. I was drinking ice water and had a mouth full of ice cubes. I thought that she was rude but if I accidently got water in her face, she deserved it.