An American Bar & Grill in Prague – Part 2

R.Epstein

In Part 1 of this saga, I explained how we got the business started in general terms. More specifically, we formed a Czech limited liability company, an s.r.o., which when spelled out are three difficult Czech words to pronounce. When deciding what to call the company, I decided, and my partner agreed, we needed to bring a small piece of San Diego to Central/Eastern Europe. I suggested “BCH” as a contraction of one of our favorite things about San Diego, the beach! And so BCH, s.r.o. was born.

The licensing for running a restaurant was a bit trickier. The articles of association can be very general much like an American limited liability company’s are where you typically choose to describe the business as any business that is within the law. And so ours read that way with the added specificity of running a restaurant.

Despite a BA in hospitality and years in the industry, my partner was unable to qualify for the license under the very “high standards” imposed by the Czechs in 1993. But so long as we could find someone Czech with the appropriate degree from a Czech institution to lend his or her name to our application, we were good to go.

Our clever and creative lawyer had such a person and we got our license to open the restaurant. Now all we needed was a location and the money to get it open! Meanwhile, we began another business which we ran through the s.r.o. in which we tried really hard to do big commodity trading deals. More on the next steps on the bar and grill project in the next installment.

An American Bar & Grill in Prague – Part 1

R.Epstein

When I decided to leave beautiful San Diego and go to Prague, I wasn’t sure what it was I could do. As a California business litigator, one has very few translatable skills for doing business in Eastern Europe. But then one of my friends in San Diego, who originally couldn’t believe I was leaving the “good life” of a senior associate in a well-respected big law firm, decided his seemingly dead-end job as a banquet manager at a San Diego hotel was way too much work for way too little money. He claimed to have the experience necessary to open and run a restaurant and thought Prague would be a great place to open an American bar and grill. That sounded like a lot more fun than trying to import and sell used medical equipment, which was the first serious business idea that crossed my bow. So we agreed that we’d go to Prague together and open an American bar and grill there.

Yet, I still had no experience in what it took to open a restaurant let alone manage one. This was very much my partner’s project. But I did know what I liked in a bar and grill and was able to contribute to the concept of the place by drawing on years of experience frequenting these uniquely American, fun places. Not to mention that many of us guys dream of owning our own bar. This was my chance and since I had someone I thought could actually run it if we got it open, I was in!

By the time we got on the place in San Diego to head over to Prague the first time, we had a pretty good idea of the concept. I am a firm believer in not reinventing the wheel and there was a bar and grill in San Diego, Pacific Beach to be exact, that we both liked and thought would be a great guide on what we would do in Prague. The name of the place was The Daily Planet. Unfortunately, it no longer exists. But more on the program in the next installment.

When we got to Prague, we got right into the process of trying to find a location, obtain the necessary licensing and otherwise get set up for doing business there. As I mentioned in my “Prague in 1992″ post, we were fortunate in gaining the assistance of finding a flat in Prague that fit our very austere budge, but had a telephone as well, a very rate commodity in Prague at the time. This became our home and office for the next couple of years!

Through other Americans we met as we began to network in ex-patriot community, we found a young lawyer who seemed able to get pretty much anything you needed done – somehow. What we needed was a company licensed to run a restaurant as well as having the flexibility to do other types of business. Although we didn’t realize it at the time being too naive in business to know any better, what we were trying to set up was a boutique investment banking/business management enterprise but without any of the contacts in the financial community and very little business management experience. Yet we were taken seriously because we were from the “West.” Such was Prague in those days.

Prague in 1992

R.Epstein

I first arrived in Prague in 1992. At that time, it was still Czechoslovakia. No one knew whether the fall of the Berlin Wall and the opening of the Eastern Bloc countries was going to last. Yugoslavia, which many Americans confused with Czechoslavakia I’m sorry to say, was deep into ethnic strife. Half of my world thought I was nuts giving up a secure, corporate law practice in a big established law firm in San Diego for the unknown of Prague. But to me, it was a moment in history which only comes once in a lifetime. So, I sold my car, rented my townhouse on the beach and went to Prague to get involved.

Luckily for me, my law firm actually had a small office in Prague so I had a point of contact even though I was no longer working for the firm. That proved an incredibly valuable thing for us in terms of an entre into how things work there to the point of even having them help us find the flat which became our home and office for the next two years.

The atmosphere in Prague at that time was magical. It seemed anything was possible and there were no real rules governing how to get it done. The Czechs themselves had not yet decided exactly how they were going to regulate business and the city government didn’t quite know how to deal with all of the young people who had flocked to Prague at a time when raving was rampant and Prague was full of roving nightclubs and parties.

As a foreigner that had come to Prague with a fairly serious business objective, namely to get some kind of business off the ground, I found I had far more credibility than was my due simply because I was from the “West.” Teaching English was one of the most popular and in demand services. The Czechs in Prague had already gotten tired of the far too many foreigners in their city. And the easy money, mainly from buying recently restituted real estate from unsophisticated Czechs, had run its course. And so we set off on our first project – to open an American bar and grill in Prague!

Anecdotes

R.Epstein

Some of the most interesting and insightful information comes from peoples’ direct experiences in foreign countries especially when the ignorant American makes a classic faux pas. I would like to invite people to share their experiences in the region and I’ll go first.

When I first arrived in the Region, I was a single man and very happy about it. I met a beautiful Polish girl through a friend and arranged to meet in Warsaw’s Lazenki Park on a Sunday afternoon. It was summertime and hot, so I showed up in a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops. She came dressed to the 9’s and to my dismay all of the people around us were dressed rather formerly. It must have been embarrassing for her although she hid it well. It certainly was for me. Although she and I remained friends, that’s all we ever were.

Lesson learned: Be careful about blindly following your cultural practices when in foreign countries.