Behind fat profits sits a moral brigade spitting fire, a foolish deadline and no-go laws. The challenge of running a nightclub in Mumbai — the inside story Make a drinking plan with any South Mumbaiite over 35, and the conversation will inevitably veer towards how partying in the ’90s meant a 5 am stint at Copa Cabana (Chowpatty) or Fashion Bistro (Sterling cinema), then hitting Marine Plaza for breakfast and rolling into bed by 6 am.
• A police van waits outside a south Mumbai nightclub to make sure guests leave before the 1.30 am deadline. To avoid ‘trouble’, club staff often begin pouring leftover drinks in disposal cups as early as 12.45 am
“Those were glorious days,” admits the former owner of a discotheque in Fort, who in the same breath, also speaks of extortion threats. That may sound like it came straight out of an RGV film, yet most top night club owners today, say it’s a grim scene. While the business guarantees oodles of money — possible with high profit margins on food and alcohol — it certainly isn’t easy.
Mirror learnt that five to seven per cent of the profits (by conservative estimates) go into keeping cops and government officials ‘happy’.
From acquiring a host of licences, battling an unreasonable deadline and killer rents to unhappy neighbours and the occasional moralistic cop unable to fathom why women must visit nightclubs, owners have a lot on their plate.
Licence run-around
Imrun Sethi, the 32-year-old owner of Pune’s all-day-diner and pub Terttulia has big plans for 2013. This includes a bar and restaurant at a resort in Goa in time for tourist season, and a café in Versova by the end of the year. He is also keen to open Terttulia, which comes with a Tapas bar, in Mumbai.
“After living in a pond, I want to make a mark in the ocean,” he grins. He has been scouting for locations both, in South Mumbai and the suburbs, for over a month. “My main concern is real estate prices.”
Sethi also has a wait of anywhere between five months to a year to procure licences. What’s more, there is no single window from where they can be acquired — he must make the rounds of various departments in the municipal corporation and cop stations.
Luckily for him, he already has a five-and-a-half-year-old establishment in Maharashtra, so he knows which ones to procure. Will that make it easier for him? Not really. Mirror spoke with BMC’s Executive Health Officer Dr Arun Bamne for some clarity: Night clubs, he says, do not exist as a category.
They are issued licences by the Public Health Department under the category of Eating House. The liquor licence comes from the State Excise Department; a Public Entertainment Licence comes from the police.
There are others — like the Shop and Establishment licence, and a temporary licence for awnings during the monsoon. These places are also taxed under a variety of laws, including the Income Tax Act, the Expenditure Tax Act, the Prohibition and Excise Act, and Stamp Act.
According to Samir Chhabria, who was the business head at Colaba lounge Privé owned by Chateau Indage’s Vikrant Chougule and Aditya Kilachand, this comes close to 35 per cent of the earnings.
Your favourite nightspot also comes under the ambit of a number of laws including a Minimum Wages Act, Payment of Wages Act, and Payment of Bonus Act.
Licences can be suspended under the new Food Safety and Standards Authority Act of India issued by the Food and Drug Administration, if health checkups of workers aren’t conducted.
“We have a whole bunch of archaic laws that make it impossible to have a restaurant on the coastline,” Riyaaz Amlani of Impresario Entertainment and Hospitality, which ran the much-loved Salt Water Grill in Chowpatty from 2005 to 2008 points out. “There are contradictory interdepartmental legislations.
For instance, the tourism ministry will tell you they want to encourage water sports, and, as per their guidelines, every place with water sports needs a restaurant. Then the environment ministry will say you cannot build any permanent structure within 500 metres of the coastline.
The municipal authorities will give you a hard time while issuing a food licence, and it goes on. It’s a bit like playing Russian roulette to see which legal obstruction comes up first. My permission to serve alcohol was granted and revoked several times in those three years.”
Here’s another striking instance of how too many departments spoil the broth. A young owner, who once ran a popular night club in Bandra for eight years says, “Just before New Year’s, papers report that night clubs have permission to run till the wee hours of the morning.
While the Excise Department has granted permission, the police say they haven’t. Owners then bribe officials, because of this lack of unision.” While the existence of the laws guarantees rights to staff, the system has led to a “parallel payment” mechanism that renders club owners easy targets.
The working partner of another Colaba club that has been around for years, admitted that he keeps the shutters down during the day to avoid attracting the attention of the municipality.
“A new official turns up with a challan, every other day. They’ll say things like, ‘I can’t see the board’ when it’s perfectly visible. There’s nothing one can do but pay up,” says the sextagenarian. But another resto-bar owner rues that bribes don’t guarantee immunity.
The municipal body cracked down on his establishment three times in five years, forcing him to change locations thrice. “Either put a system in place, or stick with the extra-legal one. Officials mess with both and that’s very frustrating.”
A tight ropewalk
Not that business is suffering. Tarun Thadani says his Worli Village’s Cool Chef Café, a shortlived venue where underground parties were held, will soon reopen as “a 21st century cyber bar”.
“Any nightspot in Mumbai makes between Rs 20 lakh and Rs 60 lakh a month,” he says. Ketan Kadam, coowner of Fire ‘n’ Ice, one of the city’s most popular nightclubs that emerged in 1999 and shut shop in 2004 declares, “Despite the hassles, it’s a viable business, with a margin of 450 per cent on alcohol and 150 per cent on food.”
Vishal Shetty says the shelf life of a Mumbai nightclub is 3-4 years, making reinvention mandatory
However, the shelf life of a night club is barely three to four years, says Vishal Shetty, Kadam’s partner in Fire ‘n’ Ice. What’s more, Chhabria points out that commercial rental rates are anywhere between Rs 200 to Rs 700 per square feet, depending on the location.
This probably explains why so many clubs shut shop or undergo renovations and reopen with new names — overheads are high from the word go. “In most cases, owners might change, but the management remains the same.
This is mainly because licences can’t be sold or acquired easily,” adds Chhabria. After Privé downed shutters in July 2012, members-only club Ghost opened in its place in October. It too, shut down two months ago.
Kadam’s plan to start a chain of well-priced bars with branches in Colaba, Bandra, and Malad beginning with Crazy Dog near Sterling Cinema, CST, is still underway. The place is being renovated, and the sign board that had come up some months ago has come off.
Jeetu Navlani of Tryst, a nightclub highly popular among youngsters in High Street Phoenix, tells us, “Most nightclubs here are renovated every two years. In the last nine years, Tryst has had four makeovers.
This is crucial to keep the crowd coming back.” “Two years is a lifetime in this competitive business,” agrees Meldan D’Cunha of Pali Naka seafood resto-bar Casa Soul Fry — its SoBo branch shut down two months ago and returned as a speakeasy bar, The Local.
The Bandra property has continued to flourish for 17 years. “There are differences between nightclubs and nightspots,” D’Cunha clarifies, “and the challenges faced by both differ — wherever dancing is involved, the hassles are greater.
Once you have live music and acts, securing permissions become a nightmare. Restaurants require many of the same licences as these places, but the hassles are different: changing consumer and dining trends, rising costs of raw materials, and in our case, the unavailability of seafood in the monsoon.”
‘Why must you party?’
Serena Menon, a journalist who started the Facebook group SOS: Mumbai’s Nightlife in May 2012, after ACP Vasant Dhoble began a crackdown on several of the city’s popular nightspots including Café Zoe in Lower Parel and Shiro in Worli says, “With so many young professionals who don’t have 9 am to 5 pm jobs, the 1.30 am deadline is nonsensical.
Restaurateurs and club owners have argued in the past that they only have 11 pm to 1.30 pm to make money, which isn’t enough time.”
She points out that even the National Restaurant Association of India brought up the matter during the launch of the India Food Services Report 2013, making suggestions, which included pushing time limit for bars and lounges to 3 am.
However, resident associations wouldn’t want that. Noisy revellers spilling into the streets at 1.30 am aren’t looked upon too kindly. Kishore DK, owner of WTF! prefers to look for venues that already have licences.
Rana Chakraborty
“This is particularly important for Bandra, since authorities have now stopped issuing any more licences there.” Poison, owned by actor Shilpa Shetty and husband Raj Kundra came under the ire of Bandra ALMs, and shut soon after Sohail Khan bought a stake and reopened it as Royalty in 2010.
It reopened a year later, but didn’t last long. Residents also targeted the popular Escobar, Bonobo, Hawaiian Shack, One Above On Toes and Firangi Paani.
“We faced a lot of problems where residents in the area were concerned, and it is not wrong to say that eateries or any place that invites crowds after dusk can sometimes be a nuisance.
In our case, the road leading up to the club would get jammed, preventing their access into their buildings. Being arrogant about such things never helps,” adds Chhabria. The solution: the residents would be invited for dinner, or offered discounts or a free membership.
But what of irritations that can’t be called rational? Aftab Siddiqui of Khar ALM typified the moral panic that night clubs result in: drunken revellers are almost having sex on the streets, she famously said in a newspaper interview last year.
Dhoble echoed the sentiment and told a reporter that women who carried a change of clothes to a night club were up to no good.
Nor were single women who went out for a drink. Malini Agarwal, celebrity blogger of MissMalini.com, points out the danger of such thinking.
“The stereotype that nightclubs are a haven for drugs and illicit behaviour sends out a wrong message. ‘Going out at night means you’re inviting trouble’ fosters wrong notions about violence against women.”
“The city should encourage nightlife because it’s also a symbol of an empowered youth. Instead of regulating their behaviour, the government should put safety checks in place.
The drunk and driving rule is a great example of this,” she says. Thomas Cherian, co-owner of Mahalaxmi’s 20-year-old watering hole, The Ghetto, agrees. “I feel we are still in a quasi Prohibition Era: You need a permit to drink even if you are of legal age; it states that you are permitted to drink for medical reasons; there are restrictions on the amount of alcohol you can purchase for personal consumption; there are restrictions on the freedom to dance and enjoy music. These laws are just antediluvian.”
A poll conducted in the 9,310 member-strong SOS Facebook group revealed that Mumbaikars’ biggest peeve about the city’s nightlife is the deadline, followed by crackdown by authorities, expenses and a lack of variety.
Moving on
Mirror reported last week that a consultancy firm has been hired to suggest a legal framework of laws and licenses that are better suited to the times.
The government has identified seven departments, including home, excise, energy, urban development, revenue, tourism and labour whose rules and regulations will be modified. The report is expected in four months. There still might be something to raise a toast to. - With inputs by Sharmeen Hakim
Cool dhef cafe's many reinventions
Worli’s Cool Chef Café which opened in 2011 became an alternate music space that hosted underground ‘anti-parties’ and emerging artistes.
However, after reports of unpaid dues to promoters and an ugly incident which involved a bout of ransacking by Shiv Sena workers because it was “ruining Indian culture”, it reinvented itself as Kolonial, a food-focused joint the following year. Now shut again, it will reopen as “a 21st century cyber bar”.
‘The first authentic discotheque east of suez’
Colaba club Voodoo still retains the name under which it was registered in 1969 — The Slip Disc. Started by Ramzan Patel, it became the go-to place for the city’s youth, especially after Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin gave an impromptu performance here in 1972.
It also became a favourite with Mumbai’s LGBT crowd, who felt at ease thanks to a management that ‘was cool about gay people,’ according to a former patron.
Shahpur Irani (right), the working partner, has teamed up with Inder Vhatwar, one of a handful of queer party organisers in the city, to boost attendance at the night club that had to shut shop after ACP Vasant Dhoble raided it on March 30, last year.
► There are contradictory interdepartmental legislations.. so it’s a bit like playing Russian roulette to see which legal obstruction comes up first
- Riyaaz Amlani, on running salt water grill by the chowpatty coastline
