What if your biggest profit leak is hiding behind the bar, in the engine your guests never see?
Tobin Ellis spent 30 years behind the stick before he started designing bars for a living. As founder of Studio Barmagic, he’s redesigned everything from NFL stadiums to five-diamond resorts, once lifting a landmark hotel bar’s revenue 131% in a single quarter.
In this conversation, we get into why your labor problem is really a design problem, why the money is made during peak volume instead of slow Tuesdays, and why he builds every bar for the bartender first, the guest second, and the investor last.
If your margins are thin and your weekends are leaving money on the table, this one shows you where to look.
That’s Tobin Ellis. To learn more about his work designing high-performance bars and to grab his book, Bar Design Essentials, visit barmagic.com.
The Playbook Takeaways
- Your labor problem is often a design problem. Tobin’s core argument is that understaffing and slow service frequently trace back to how the bar is built, not to who is working it — the physical layout dictates how much labor the job actually requires.
- The money is made at peak volume, not on slow Tuesdays. Design decisions should be judged against your busiest hours. A bar that functions on a quiet weeknight but breaks down on a Saturday is leaving the weekend on the table.
- Build for the bartender first, the guest second, the investor last. Tobin’s ordering is deliberate: the person working the station determines throughput, throughput determines the guest experience, and the guest experience determines the return.
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About the Author: Josh Kopel is a Michelin-awarded restaurateur, host of the Full Comp podcast, and coach to independent restaurant owners. More about Josh · Learn with Josh
