Many people dream of opening a bar or restaurant in
Tenerife but Gary made his dream come true. How did he do it?
Back home I worked for a long time in sales and invested money in a bar and
a hotel in Liverpool. Later I found that I wanted to live where people’s
first instinct
was to enjoy themselves and not to
be worrying about everyday matters.
Now, I own
several businesses in Los Cristianos. I opened Cheers Family Bar, in San
Marino, five years ago. Three years later I opened O'Callaghans Cabaret Bar
in the Apolo centre and in June 2004 I set up Star of India Restaurant, also
in the Apolo Centre.
I get to my office in Cheers Bar in the morning (I also
look after 24 apartments) and stay there until 4pm: I go home for dinner and
a shower then I’m at O'Callaghans for 9pm, where I compere the evenings
entertainment until 2am - then it’s home to bed!
My advice to anyone thinking of starting their own business
in Tenerife is to spend a
lot of time investigating all aspects of
it, such as the
clientele, turnover, proposed improvements in
the area and possible debts on the
premises.
It’s a
lot more complicated opening a business here than in the UK; so many
payments for different things have to be made. We were at the final hurdle
for the opening license when the council inspector decided to leave his job;
because they don’t have a replacement everything is now held in abeyance,
which is very frustrating. I think that success is only measured by the
effort you put in, so if I fail it’s nobody’s fault but my own. I believe
that if you give people quality they will stay with you; we’ve been very
lucky to have a year round trade. My clients are a mixture of expats and
British tourists.
It takes a lot of hard work and effort trying to keep everybody relatively
happy and there are some days when you wonder if it’s all worth it. But then
you get some little kid telling you they have had the best holiday ever and
it kind of makes everything worthwhile.
This feature is republished through
the kind permission of Living Tenerife. Visit the
Living Tenerife website for more
interesting articles on the expat lifestlye in Tenerife.