re: Pelican house is awful

My only guess is that overhead is really high. It's a huge space for a bar

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PH has always had great service.

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great service? perhaps

knowledgeable bartenders? not in my experiences (which are about three)

Rumors are rumors, so I could be completely full of shite, but other bar owners have told me their rent is something like $18k/month.

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Problem is with the young professional crowd is that we won't stay long. We're either there before or after we go out to dinner, movie or downtown where it's more lively.

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Exactly.

Bulldog, Pelican, Corporate, etc... these places are all dead come 10pm (excluding pint night at BD).

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Exactly.

Bulldog, Pelican, Corporate, etc... these places are all dead come 10pm (excluding pint night at BD).

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Seems to come with having to have after work bars situated in or amidst a bunch of strip malls.

Such a sad shitty set up.

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bar service is starting to go the way of table service in this town .. at one time, you could avoid crappy table service by sitting at the bar, getting served immediately, and then tipping an appreciative bartender well .. but now, it seems like they are putting just anybody behind the bar -- i.e. there aren't a whole lot of professional bartenders anymore .. there's this new phenomenon around BR where the fricking bartender will just DISAPPEAR, unexplained, for 15 minutes at a time .. empty glasses all around the bar and people looking at each other .. or, as you said, you have a bartender either working a customer or a customer working the bartender and they are too dumb to realize the other 14 customers need something ..

it has certainly played a role in my cutting back on going out to eat ..

as far as Pelican House is concerned .. i find the place to be really odd ..

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Everyone started following Brandon & Jack's lead, just hire pieces of arse to sit behind the bar, teach them to make basic shite, and....profit

My complaints of PH. Granted i've only been a handful of times

1) Cover charge. It's 2015. Leave the cover charge to tigerland. People shouldn't have to pay money to enter an establishment they already plan to spend money in. It simply turns away customers.
2) The bar layout is shite. Half of it is blocked off by a railing. The open area to the left gets filled up because there is a swarm of people blocking off the section with the railing behind it. Too congested.
3) The taps are terrible. This supposed to be a beer bar, but the taps are barely better than the 5 taps at sammy's. Wow, you have every flavor of Abita and BMC. Maybe, branch out. Hell, copy what CBD does and get their beers. CBD is at least trying to get new stuff in.
4) Tap turnover. Change out the taps when the beer goes bad. I can't tell you how many bad beers i've had because they were old just sitting in the keg.
5) Service is terrible. I went with some work buddies during the day on a friday (around 1 pm). Including the 3 of us, there were 5 people in the bar. It took the waitress a good 10 minutes to get to us. The beers took an additional 5 minutes to come back to the table, and then she disappeared. When we finally grabbed her again to order, it took another 10-15 minutes for the food to come out. There were supposedly 3 bartenders working at the time. 2 were in the corner talking to the 2 patrons at the bar, the other one was a ghost.
6) Food is expensive and meh. I don't really care for the food, personally and it is way too much for what it is. But, i don't go there for food.
7) Bad layout. The whole place is uncomfortable. I can't place it but it feels like i'm at a bad chili's. I think the place is way too big if it wants to be a beer and whiskey bar. Too many overhead lights, and the 57 tv's in teh place is a bit obnoxious.

I'm not trying to pile on and bash the place, but with CBD and the Cove being right there, they need to step their game up. All of the above reasons are fixable, albeit the remodeling would be a bit more expensive.

Hell they have plenty of room, i think if they removed some of the tables and turned them into long tall bars, it would help. Maybe throw a shuffle board table in there.

But for me, my choice on the rare occasions i do go out, will be to hit up CBD. I've never been but have seen some of their taps and am excited to try it out.

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Problem is with the young professional crowd is that we won't stay long. We're either there before or after we go out to dinner, movie or downtown where it's more lively.


Exactly.

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The craft beer crowd is usually not a late night crowd, from my experience. I don't drink fine wine, much, but I don't imagine people who are wine aficionados stay up really late drinking fine wines, either. There are exceptions, but but for the most part...

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But for me, my choice on the rare occasions i do go out, will be to hit up CBD. I've never been but have seen some of their taps and am excited to try it out.

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I will also add to this. If you are trying to be a craft beer bar, then you don't need a gimmick. Just get good beer, that may be hard to find, and the craft beer guys will show up. Having 120 taps of shite i can find at winn dixie isn't impressive nor sought after. Having 5 to 10 taps of stuff i'll never be able to buy, or is truly unique will bring that crowd in. CBD gets it. Everything else is just mustard on the hot dog.

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One of their bright spots is their food.

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If the food at PH is a "bright spot" then there really is no hope for them. The food is far from good at pelican house. I went once when they opened and ordered a few items off of the original menu and they were all bad. I went back after they reworked their menu and it was still bad.

I'll pile on and back the people that say these guys have no idea what they are doing. I've been served the wrong beer at this place more than once, served ancient IPAs which they tried to pass off as fresh, had bad service, etc... I've been probably a total of 5 times since they opened and never had a positive experience. I can't recall a single time I've been there and left without complaining to the management about one thing or another.

I have numerous other options in town where the staff can at least meet my needs. I have other options in town where the staff is trained to know what they are serving. You don't usually want your average customer to be more knowledgeable about your business than your average employee.

These guys are going to hemorrhage their savings over the next year and go way into debt and then flame out. There's no way they save this place, they should quit while they still have some money left.

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You're one of those people that are hard to please though, right?

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Nah, I'm pretty easy going, but I'll speak up if shite is way out of whack. I'm not going to pay for shite that I didn't order.