How Much Does It Cost to Rent a Great Party Venue in Memphis
There are three primary components to the price you’ll pay to rent space for a party in Memphis:
Venue rental fee
Number of guests
Food and beverage
While number of guests and food/beverage spend are mostly up to the party planner, venue rental fees are typically set by the venue in advance.
A venue rental fee is the amount of money you’d have to pay to have the place to yourself (private and not open to the public). Large venues typically have multiple sub-areas available for private rental, so the venue can remain open to the public while still allowing your group the privacy it needs. These sub-areas can range from a small private meeting room for a dozen guests to an entire building for 300+ guests.
Renting out the entire venue is typically the most expensive option because the venue has to take into account not only the revenue it won’t receive from the public, but also the frustration its regular guests may feel upon learning after arrival that the venue is closed to the public.
Venue rental fees range greatly depending on the time of your rental. Obviously duration of the party affects the price, but so does time of year, day of the week and time of day. Ultimately venue rental fees are a function of supply and demand. For example, January and February are typically slow times for restaurants and bars, with Mondays and Tuesday afternoons being the slowest. So to book a party on a Monday afternoon in January you may find the venue waives the venue rental fee entirely -- they’re just happy to have any business at that time! For a Saturday night in October, however, you might find some of highest venue rental fees because that is typically a very profitable time for restaurants, bars and other venues.
Many venues, especially those that operate as restaurants and bars open to the public on a regular basis, waive venue rental fees completely as long as the party planner agrees to spend a certain amount of money on food and beverage. Because all of our venues (Bounty, Maciel’s Highland, Railgarten, Loflin Yard and Rec Room/Civil Axe Throwing) fit this model of being open to public and serving food and beverage, our typical approach is to waive venue rental fees if the guests plan to purchase a certain dollar amount of food and beverage. The purchase requirement, like venue rental fees discussed above, varies depending on size of the venue (or sub-area) and time of the year, week and day.
Basically we take into account what we’d typically make in revenue from the area you want at the time you want, and try to at least match that in your food and beverage spend. This helps both us and the party planner because we can count on each other. The party planner knows in advance what kind of space she’ll have and what kind of menu will be available. The venue knows exactly what to expect and can allocate staff and other resources accordingly to ensure the party goes well.