Opening a bar in Vancouver in 2026 can cost of upwards of over a million dollars - and that's before you've even served a single drink. So what does it take to sign a lease, survive the build-out, and create something that lasts? I recently sat down with four veterans of Vancouver's hospitality scene to talk through exactly that. Andrew Kong and Max Curzon-Price are two of the city's best bartenders, most recently behind the award-winning bar program at Suyo. Andrew's currently holding things down at Nomo Nomo, and Max at Elisa, while they both work toward opening day of their new joint venture, Bar Supernova. It's still in the early stages (lease negotiations are underway), but the dream is already becoming very real - as well as the attached uncertainties. I wanted to know what they're feeling, what they've learned so far, and what they're hoping to build. To help put their experience in context, I invited two people who've been through it all before: James Iranzad, co-founder of Gooseneck Hospitality, the group behind Bells and Whistles, Lucky Taco, and Bufala; and Dallah El-Chami, co-founder of the beloved Superbaba and Mish Mish. Both have navigated the fog of opening, managed to keep the lights on through various ups and downs, and come out the other side with hard-won perspectives on what the hospitality business actually looks like, including lease structures, P&L reports, debt repayment, and all the other things nobody tells you about until you're already in it. We also got into the bigger picture, inspired by a searingly honest Toronto Life column about why restaurants close, written by chef/restaurateur David Schwartz last month (January 13th, 2026). In '“The gap between perceived value and the true cost of doing business is becoming unmanageable”: Chef David Schwartz on why your favourite restaurants close', Schwartz argues that the gap between what diners think a meal should cost and what it actually costs has become unmanageable. Then we took it one step further by posing the question, could dynamic pricing be part of the solution? I made the case for it in my recent column for Medium, 'Dynamic Pricing Could Save Restaurants. Too Bad We Only Like It When It’s Called ‘Happy Hour’', and I wanted to hear what four people with serious skin in the game actually think. There's no roadmap for opening a bar these days. But this conversation gets pretty close.
