Hookah Bar Business Plan

The website for Arz al-Lubnan Hookah Bar will offer a standard “brochure-style” presentation with details on the products, services, location, and concept of the bar, as well as an extended social community component, tied in to Facebook. The website will serve casual customers interested in the bar as well as fans who become involved in creating cultural events and groups at Arz al-Lubnan Hookah Bar through the social portal, which will include a basic calendar visible to all users and extended features reserved for members who log-in.

Website Marketing Strategy

The website for Arz al-Lubnan Hookah Bar will be promoted through PR, direct advertising, search engine optimization, and the growing community of customers.

• PR efforts will include promotion to blog writers for the Trendytown area and hookah bars/Middle Eastern culture and guest posts by the owners to these blogs. PR will also focus on the notable social media component of the website as it ties in to developing programming for Arz al-Lubnan Hookah Bar
• Direct advertising will include Google ads, Facebook ads, and targeted ads on a few area websites. $1,000 a month will be devoted to this type of advertising in the first year
• Search engine optimization will begin during the development of the website through its initial design and will continue with an outsourced firm retained to continue SEO work for $1,000 a month
• The community of customers will generate word-of-mouth and online referrals by inviting friends to the Arz al-Lubnan Hookah Bar website through Facebook or Arz al-Lubnan Hookah Bar’s social network component

Development Requirements

Development of the website requires an experienced Web development firm with past success in developing social networking components for businesses. The website will include the following in its basic, front end:

• About Us – background on the business and its concept and mission
• FAQs about hookah smoking and Arz al-Lubnan Hookah Bar
• Menu of food, drinks, and tobacco
• Photo gallery
• Contact page
• Location and Directions page with connection to maps from Google Maps or MapQuest

The social portal of the site will include:

• Membership sign-up and log-in pages
• Social calendar for Arz al-Lubnan Hookah Bar
• Step-by-step instructions for creating an event, discussion group, or throwing a party at Arz al-Lubnan Hookah Bar
• Individual pages for user-created events
• Account page for each user showing events they are signed up for or have created
• Sharing buttons to make it easy for users to send event information via Facebook, MySpace, Twitter
• Automated tie-ins between the site and the Facebook Fan Page to minimize changes that must be made in two places

Furthermore, the developer will create a Facebook Fan Page, and a back end for the site including:

• Form to allow management to make changes to menu offerings and prices without the need to use HTML
• Approval area for management to approve, reject, or request additional information on events
• Ability for management to add or remove photos from photo gallery and to organize them into albums

Development of the website will occur over a three month period. The first two months will produce a beta version which will be tested by management, with revisions given to developers, for one month after that. It is expected that additional changes will extend over the first few months of operation and $500/month of the marketing budget is devoted to ongoing maintenance and development in the first year.