I have been asked many times about concept development. Sometimes it is a painstaking process involving a lot of thought and testing of ideas. Other times, it is testament to that old adage, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

In developing the Mai Tai Bar concept into the most successful bar in the islands, it was the latter. Here is the story.

At our Bubba Gump site in A La Moana Shopping Center. There was an outdoor area directly in front of us that the mall wanted to lease for some type of foodservice. We were busy with Bubba Gump but being serial paranoiacs, we worried that someone would take it who could extract business away from us. When we heard a rumor that it might be Cheesecake Factory doing an off-premises pie outlet, we decided to act. The rumor was false but it got us off the dime.

The landlord seemed favorably disposed to an outdoor bar and lunch concept that might serve cocktails into the evening so that was what we proposed. Circumstances caused everyone to want to move quickly and before we even opened the Bubba Gump, we had secured the bar site. The problem was that we really did not have the slightest idea what we were going to do with it. Our proposal was no more specific than what I outlined above.

We decided, for the time being, to use the space as a staging area for Bubba Gump’s construction. As we neared completion on the restaurant, I went to Honolulu to check on the status of the job. I was sitting on a pile of lumber in the staging area with our brilliant and creative General Contractor, Kevin Walker and some senior people discussing this bar-to-be. We wanted to be a little upscale but also kind of retro-Hawaiian in the look.

We opened the Mai Tai Bar a few weeks after the Gump. It was exactly as we had seen it in our minds. There was retro Hawaiian rattan furniture and lamps, murals on the only wall and lots of local vegetation. In the evenings we had a guitarist playing and singing Hawaiian music. It was really an upscale tropical oasis in the mall where shoppers could get away from the retail hustle.

I had operated a number of bars since it was a big part of Rusty Pelican’s business and I was familiar with the genre. Though this was a bar, I really did not think it would take off as a big drinking or entertainment venue. Nevertheless, I was willing to give it a try.

When we had opened the La Jolla Rusty Pelican years before, I had made a point to only hire extremely attractive women as cocktail servers. We became known for that and people all around San Diego talked about it. I wanted the same for the Mai Tai Bar. We went so far as to call it casting instead of hiring and our people met the objective.

Over the course of the next several months, business at Mai Tai grew and grew. Then it grew some more. Two years later, MTV was trying to film episodes of “Real World Hawaii” in it and hipster websites were describing it as “the hottest bar in Hawaii”. Our cocktail servers were being used around the islands as fashion models and working on TV series.

We expanded the area we had leased and the mall was trying to figure out exactly what they had started. On weekend nights we were using 15 very large Hawaiian bouncers as security and even that was sometimes not enough. The bar was doing $5 million in annual sales and throwing off more profit than many Bubba Gumps. Our decision to “protect” Bubba Gump from a new competitor had resulted in a very successful new concept.

Drugs and theft are a part of the game in bars. The long-time conventional wisdom is that 25% of the people will never steal, 25% will always steal and the other 50% will not steal if they think they might be caught. Therefore, the secret is to make it likely that they will be caught if stealing and hope the larcenous 25% don’t steal too much. It has been a constant cat and mouse game for hundreds of years.

Drugs are more difficult. The problem is not so much the employees- unless they are selling it to the customers. It is the drugs being consumed or sold by customers within the location. Every big-time bar in America has a drug deal going on almost every week and good operators have their security looking for it constantly- not to be the police or necessarily do-gooders but rather to protect their license to sell alcohol.

The bar business is very different from restaurants. People who are effective at managing bars typically do not do well running restaurants and the converse is also true. Bar managers are usually people who like going out, spend a lot of time in bars themselves and are entertainment-oriented. To be good at it long term, they have to be hard workers, not do drugs (or at least have left it behind) and stay away from the cocktail waitresses. They are predominately men. This type of individual is even more difficult to find than good restaurant managers.

It’s a tough business, and not for the faint of heart. But when the right concept meets the right team—and you stay vigilant on the details—it can become something far bigger than you planned. The Mai Tai Bar started as a defensive move. It ended up a phenomenon. That’s the bar business at its best: unpredictable, unforgiving, and occasionally, unforgettable.

The bar business is very different from restaurants. People who are effective at managing bars typically do not do well running restaurants and the converse is also true. Bar managers are usually people who like going out, spend a lot of time in bars themselves and are entertainment-oriented. To be good at it long term, they have to be hard workers, not do drugs (or at least have left it behind) and stay away from the cocktail waitresses. They are predominately men. This type of individual is even more difficult to find than good restaurant managers.