Has anyone seriously considered owning and operating a strip club?

Yes, but the market is really getting challenging for independent owners in many places. If I were to ever try it I'd start with someplace small that's a short drive outside of major metro. Or a dive that's in a so-so part of a city. I saw a club like that the other day called the Body Shop in Maryland that was small but had a good setup. The talent wasn't great, but that's fixable.

I would think you would need to have tremendous patience to own one because getting a group of strippers to do what you need to be successful would be like herding cats. Unless you want to be around all the time, you would also have to find a reliable group of staff to keep things in order when you aren't around.

This past year showed that you would need to save or have a backup plan as your business could stop producing income for a long period of time.

I am not friends but friendly with an owner of a club. I was talking to him about paying off my house and he said he was on track to pay his off until the pandemic hit and he had a substantial drop in income.

It’s a business like any other and your success will depend on how you run it. If your plan to own a strip club is so you can bang strippers on the cheap your chances of failure are approximately 100%.

Doesn't seem like club owners are typically hooking up left and right with dancers. Seems like guys have to be famous and/or really hot to have good hookups. Otherwise, what you'll pay in drama will make you prefer to pay in $.

I'd (passively) invest a good chunk of change is something that doesn't exist: a table/couch dance club. High cover, not necessarily a bar, no stage dancing, no house fee, no cut for the club from each dance, you can see on the website the names of the dancers who actually showed up that night before you go.

The club I've been in that seemed the best-run to me was Luxxx in Peoria, Illinois. One of the strippers who dances there owns it. But I only got one really primo couch dance there, from a dancer who was only there temporarily. Most of the dancers seemed more focused on getting stage tips, and tips for sitting and drinking with customers.

ilbbaicnl, those types of clubs do exist.

Not for nothing, but do you have a nickname for your nickname? That's a load to type out lol.

No way. I would get in so much trouble "associating" with the hired help.

Be careful about taking something you really enjoy and turning it into your job. Also, being good at going to strip clubs does not equate to being good at running one.

In this instance, the best customers would likely be the absolute worst owners.

For me... that's a solid 'no'.

I’d open a club for the patrons to have their own comfortable space to argue about Afghanistan.

@wallanon ilbb works. Where are those clubs? Closest I've seen is in Canada.

I want Ivanka Trump to change my political opinions by beating me about the head with her boobs in the VIP of nicespice's club.

Try herding cats then you’ll get an idea of what it’s like to own a strip club

@25 I manage major IT projects for a living. Herding cats is my specialty. 😊 It is an entertaining thought but I doubt I would ever act on it. There are better investments.

A bouncer once told me, that if you become staff (floor man, manager, owner) you'll never see women the same way again. He said if he could do it all over, he'd never have taken the job. I guess the fantasy amd fun just disappear and you see the worst in the girls.

@Mother did that bouncer grow up in woods or what? Strippers are just fuck up in the usual, boring, human ways.

I used to think I wanted to own a strip club. All those boobs plus tax-free cash. But dealing with strippers as employees would probably turn me gay.

Why would I want to place my financial well-being in the hands of mercurial dancers? Good Lord no.

I don't think strippers are such a special category of people to manage. When your workers can't count on some minimum, regular $ amount, they feel much less motivated to not flake on you. The hardest thing to manage is a construction company, where you sometimes can't give your people work for months.

^ I owned a company in the construction industry until I retired last year, if you can't give your people work for months you don't know what you are doing. I started my business in 1989 and never went through a period of time when we didn't have several projects running at the same time,

I'm a lawyer who doesn't practice law...I work in anti-money laundering compliance for an investment bank. I would totally own a strip club...to launder money.

My cousin hates ice cream: he owned a store. My wife no longer likes pizza: she made it for years. My niece is a bartender: she no longer drinks. Hell no to owning a strip club.

I'll adapt this from another type of "dream job" perspective:


How do you make $2 million dollars in the strip club business?
Start with $20 million dollars...


Seriously, I think there are way too many problems now to even think about it. Imaging trying to get a business license today for a strip club? Imagine trying to hire strippers from the 18-38 age group of "woke" and "me too" and OnlyFans population? Imaging trying to advertise your new strip club on billboards, TV, YouTube, IG, Snap, Facebook? Imagine convincing local men who just spent 18 months not working and not going to clubs to fork over $25 to get in, $20-$30 for a dance, $200-$500 for a VIP and do it 3 to 5 times a month? That could mean spending over $800-$2,500 a month in "disposable" cash they probably don't have. Imagine finding a way to get local LE to NOT plant UC's in your club, or to not just raid your place looking for drugs, prostitution, and underage staff? How much will that cost you? Imaging the dirty tactics your competition - some of which are "connected" - will do to sink your business?


So sure, it's a fantasy we all may have had along the way - literally auditioning dozens of naked women for a job in your club, and willing to do a LOT to make sure you hire them. But it's a business. And most start up businesses fail in their 1st 2 years.

A group of friends and I were seriously planning on opening or gaining a controlling share of sports bars with eventually owning a Gentlemens Club.

We are all transplants from out-of-state, who had favorite sports bars in our home cities. We know what we liked about those bars that made them our favorites and why they were successful; and were going to incorporate them into our design for new bars or redesign of existing bars. The Gentlemens Club was a stretch goal for 5-7 years after we had the liquor license, food, beverage, and entertainment contracts down pat; perhaps a 10-year time horizon.

Then COVID hit. Bars and restaurants were shut down, and some forced to pay employees who found an excuse to stay home. Then the minimum wage in Florida was raised to $15/hour. Now there are food shortages, beverage shortages, worker shortages, and Biden's inflation. It just doesn't make sense at this point, I personally do not want more headaches.

I seriously considered it at one point in CT. I even had an industrial zoned spot picked out and started discussions with a "friendly" in local city government. It was on the outskirts of a very small city and close to several large hotels catering to corporate travelers. The only thing that stopped me from trying was a wife who undoubtedly would have left, with my young kids, if I did it.

But in hindsight I'm glad I didn't given what has been happening in CT the last 10 years. Affluent people have been leaving in droves and even the clubs in CT's larger "cities" were suffering even before COVID. Places like Beamers and Scruples, once CT's best clubs, are mere shadows of their former selves. All thanks to "progressive" politicos who did everything they could to encourage large employers and affluent residents to leave the state.

"... Then COVID hit. Bars and restaurants were shut down, and some forced to pay employees who found an excuse to stay home. Then the minimum wage in Florida was raised to $15/hour. Now there are food shortages, beverage shortages, worker shortages, and Biden's inflation. It just doesn't make sense at this point, I personally do not want more headaches ..."

Makes one wonder how many other small-business-owners will be dissuaded from opening businesses due to these issues (and makes one wonder if the current administration actually wants it this way).

@tetradon. Way to work the word "mercurial" into a post. That is quite possibly a first for this forum. I'm impressed.

I've really thought about it. Still do.


I think if they allowed marijuama lounges a strip club that sells weed would be a gold mine.