Shadow Empire

Chapter 114: Huge Profits and Thinking

Alberto thought about it, took out twenty dollars and put it on the table. The woman inside took the money, then took out a box with four rows of coins and put it on the counter.

Her eyes fell on Lance's face, he was her type.

Her hands were grasping the edge of her bra, as if she could lift it up at any time. "Want to see it?"

Lance looked away, "Thanks, but no thanks."

The woman whistled, glanced at him quickly, and then covered her eyes again, "I'll show it to you!"

Alberto smiled and carried the money box, put his arm around Lance's shoulders and continued walking forward. "Don't worry about her. As long as you don't have sex with her, there will be no danger."

"But if you sleep with her, you'll be in trouble!"

He didn't say what the trouble was, and Lance didn't ask. They walked through the corridor together and came to a closed door. The atmosphere and sounds unique to the bar came out from the gap in the door.

The moment it was opened, the ambiguous fluorescent lights and the powerful music instantly injected a force into people's blood vessels.

The area here is very large, at least two thousand square meters, with more than ten stages and three bars, almost all of them are people!

The girls were dancing artistically on the stage with all their might. Occasionally, a strong spotlight would sweep across, illuminating their healthy, oily skin, making people feel an impulse from the bottom of their hearts growing wildly.

The alternation of light and dark was like a battlefield between desire and reason. The wealthy people beside the stage kept throwing coins at it, and some even threw a handful of one-dollar bills!

The quality of the girls is very good, and they are totally different from those cheap bars. Whether in terms of appearance, body shape, skin or dancing skills, they are better in all aspects!

Alberto and Lance came to the bar together. Fordis was already standing at the bar and started to help. Someone saw Alberto come over, hug him, and then give up two seats.

"Two glasses of whiskey, Gold Label Lager!" He looked at Lance at the same time, and Lance rolled his eyes at him.

The bartender didn't know the story and quickly poured him two glasses. Alberto took out five dollars and handed it over.

"Two dollars and a half?"

"What else?" Alberto picked up the wine and took a sip. There were three ice cubes in the glass, which quickly reduced the discomfort of the drink.

In fact, even without ice cubes, the taste of Gold Label is not that unacceptable, it’s just that people in the Federation are used to adding ice cubes.

Lance picked up the glass and took a sip. He looked at the wine in his hand.

He sold it to Mr. Pasretto for eleven dollars a bottle, and now it is sold here for two dollars and fifty cents. What is the net profit?

A 750ml bottle of Gold Label whiskey can sell for about eleven glasses with a little left over, so if we count it as eleven glasses, that would be twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents.

The net profit is about seventeen dollars, one hundred and fifty percent net profit!
He raised his eyebrows, and for the first time personally felt the huge profits that the Prohibition brought to the gray industry!
"How many bottles of this can you sell in one night?" Lance was a little curious.

The bartender glanced at Alberto, who nodded slightly. The bartender then leaned over and whispered in a voice that only Lance and Alberto could hear, "Not necessarily, probably fifty or sixty bottles. Since it's a new opening, I'm not sure."

“But even if the popularity drops a little in the later period, we can still sell 30 to 40 bottles a day.”

Four or five hundred cups. This is the Bay Area, there is no shortage of rich people.

As long as the bar remains attractive, $2.50 a glass of wine is nothing to them!

By this calculation, the net profit of just the Gold Label La Boheme whisky here is thousands of yuan every day.

In the later period, there was a net profit of five to six hundred per day, which is more than ten thousand per month!

If you add in the wide variety of alcoholic beverages, and the fact that beer costs only ten and a half cents outside but fifty cents a glass here, they could potentially make thousands or even tens of thousands in one night!
This was the first time he had a direct impression of how profitable an underground bar was.

"Regret it?" Alberto looked at Lance's thoughtful expression, "To be honest, I'm also shocked by the profits here."

"You know, I keep an eye on hundreds of thousands of dollars every day for fear of making a mistake. I've even started losing my hair recently. How much money can I make from this?"

"But look here..." He turned around and raised his hand to show the whole scene, his eyes shifted from the faces of those crazy people to Lance's face, "They spend several dollars here every day, even dozens of dollars!"

"too crazy!"

Lance also sighed, it was really crazy!

Alberto moved closer, "Nowadays, running a bar is more profitable than any other business."

Lance was thoughtful. "But we can't do that to a certain extent. Mr. Pasretto has social connections in the Bay Area, and people are willing to come to him to spend money. If we open a bar like this in the Empire District or the Harbor District, how many people do you think can afford a glass of wine for $2.50?"

“Besides, we couldn’t find such a large place, and there was no way for the precinct to turn a blind eye to our actions.”

"This matter still needs some consideration, but it makes money, so there's no problem with that." It is short-sighted to only see the thief eating meat but not seeing the thief being beaten.

Just like here and now, many people may only pay attention to how much profit this bar brings to Mr. Pasletto in a day.

But we ignore how much he has to pay to maintain his relationships in society!
Even if some people have money and want to give it to those people, they will not accept it. After all, when they reach a certain level, those people don’t want any money.

Nowadays, many bars are opened in basements, which are narrow, cramped, poorly ventilated and feel dangerous.

How many rich people would go to places like that to get drunk and have fun?

With few options available, it is inevitable that this place will be popular.

This is like those unpalatable snacks at the corner of the alley. They are obviously unpalatable and people who eat them know it, but they still do good business.

Many people don't understand that these businesses simply fill a gap in this area and leave no options.

When someone else makes the same type of snacks and they taste a little better, the snack stand will lose business, and the same goes for bars.

Lance believes that as more bars with strong backgrounds begin to open in the Bay Area, the customer flow here will inevitably be diverted and business will not be as good as it is now.

How much will be left by then is still an unknown, maybe good, maybe not.

After thinking for a while, Alberto felt that what Lance said made sense, so the two stopped talking about opening a bar and began to focus on the entertainment on the scene.

From Lance's point of view, it is clear that the bar still has a lot of room for improvement. For example, there are too few girls here.

Of course this is normal. After all...it's very dangerous for girls late at night, especially in places like bars.

Most girls would be home by seven and never come out again.

Even if they are street prostitutes, they dare not stand until late at night. They will leave at around 8 o'clock at most, otherwise they don't know how many times they will be beaten in vain at night.

So there are too few women here. Some of them either come with their female companions or sit around the stage, which is actually not conducive to consumption in the bar.

We need to create a sense of encounter for the guests, and change their consumption concept of "I only order one cup for myself" to "I order two cups to drink with my sister". Whether they are thinking with their brains or making bets, this can double the turnover!
But he won't say these things. The cheaper something is, the cheaper it is in people's minds.

Only things that they cannot get but obtain through hard work will be regarded as treasures by them.

The second floor of the bar is full of independent small rooms, about four or five square meters in size, with an independent sofa, a round table similar to a stage, and a door.

When the little red light at the door comes on, it means there is someone inside.

This is a place for bosses who don't want to be crowded with others down there to have fun. Jason, who was lying at the bottom of Angel Lake to compete in holding his breath, tried it.

Lance saw that almost all the lights at the door of the single rooms on the second floor were on. Occasionally someone came out, but soon someone would go in and the lights would come on again.

After observing for a while, Alberto pulled Lance to be the dog carrier. They found a stage with the most people around and started to toss coins.

When anyone tried to divert the dancers' attention, Alberto would throw money onto the stage, which led to some of the drunken people starting to compete with him!
The impulse of being the top guy on the list is much stronger than the impulse brought by alcohol. If alcohol is added to the mix, Lance only watched for a short while before he saw several high rollers start throwing banknotes.

They would gather the bills into a small ball and throw them at the dancers, but only bills would do that.

Someone once did the same thing when trying to toss a coin and was beaten by the bar's security guard.

After he successfully provoked some people's anger, he secretly left. He is really not a good person!
The atmosphere in the bar was very good, and Lance also drank two glasses of wine, at least four ounces, or more than 120 milliliters.

Maybe because of the ice cubes, he couldn't even feel the effect of the alcohol on him when he drank it.

It wasn’t until about 40 to 50 minutes later that I started to feel a little tipsy…

The morning sunlight shone into the room through the window. Lance stretched on the bed, then turned over and wanted to continue sleeping for a while.

He came back at around 11 o'clock in the evening. Even after 11 o'clock, there were still people in the bar. Alberto stayed in the bar to rest and asked Lance to stay as well, but Lance refused.

It's not that he has a bad relationship with Alberto, he just doesn't want to get too close to his friends, as this would make him be labeled as "Mr. Pasletto's man."

He doesn't want to be someone else's, he is himself, he wants to make himself a banner, not someone else's.

His only memory after returning home was Ethan helping him upstairs, and then he couldn't remember anything else.

He suddenly opened his eyes and saw that he was only wearing a pair of underwear. He couldn't help but sit up and rub his head.

I hope it wasn't Ethan who took it off for me...

(End of this chapter)