Sophie Silkes

What was once considered one of the least popular spots on the McGill campus has experienced a resurgence this year. Over the past few months, Gert’s Bar has seen significant increases in sales, profits, and popularity.

This September, Gert’s had $35,968 in sales and turned a $5,736 profit. This is especially impressive considering that last September the bar made $733 in profits, which at that point was considered a good sales month.

Nick Drew, Students’ Society Vice-President Finance and Operations, said that since the bar moved downstairs from the first floor of the Shatner Building nine years ago, Gert’s had lost thousands of dollars every year due to issues such as the amateur security services run by McGill athletes and the high prices that stemmed from the bar’s expensive operating costs.

Drew said that the bar has seen a great turnaround over the past six months and sales have been quite impressive.

This past June, Gert’s had $7,555 in sales, mostly due to food and some beverage sales during the World Cup. In one week of July, when the bar was open for the World Cup final, sales reached $1,727. For a couple of weeks at the end of August before school started, the bar earned another $7,702. In the month of October, Gert’s made $53,967.

Drew attributed these increasing numbers to several causes. For one, SSMU and the bar managers have collaborated with different student groups to hold more events at Gert’s.

“I think [the success] must [come from] a lot of collaboration with different groups,” Drew said. “The bar manager is extremely receptive to having people in the bar. This year we have a bar manager who does most of the events, and we have a night manager who plans out a lot of the night events with groups.”

Drew believes that the popular daily drink specials are also a serious draw for students. He said that along with the improved service at the bar, the drink specials have “improved the bar’s image.”

One restaurant tenant who has been working at Gert’s for several years and has seen the bar change over time said he thinks that Natasha Geoffrion-Greenslade, the bar’s new manager, has “hands down” been the biggest factor contributing to its recent success.

“There’s a new manager, whose focus is primarily on [running the bar], and she’s very good at what she does,” he said.  

Under the previous manager, the tenant said that he received late payments and experienced problems with bookkeeping.

Geoffrion-Greenslade, who took over as the manager of Gert’s at the beginning of May, said that a lot of good work is being done this year at the bar, even though the success of businesses in this industry is cyclical and therefore in some ways uncontrollable.

“One of the things is I think we have a great team this year. Everyone is working very hard: myself, the night manager, Nick, our staff,” she said. “We introduced a lot of new things this year, probably because I was fresh and able to come in with a lot of new ideas. I think there’s a positive atmosphere in the bar all together.”

Although Drew is happy with Gert’s recent success, he said that there are still some improvements to be made.

“I think we still have some problems with the bar in terms of efficiency,” he said. “Now that’s it getting more popular, it gets a bit sluggish in terms of service.”

Drew said that the awkward design of the long bar can make bartending difficult for servers when the bar gets busy. Geoffrion-Greenslade agreed.

“When you’re at a bar, you don’t want to wait half an hour to get a drink,” she said. “No matter how many staff members I put on in a night, the service can’t get that much better because it’s such a long bar, it’s very inefficient, our inventory control system is very complex, there’s a lot going on.”

Next summer, major renovations will take place to partially revamp the look of the bar, and to mainly make it more efficient.  Drew said that the winning design from last year’s Great Gert’s Challenge will correct space problems and reshape the serving bar.

Drew said he hopes that the  changes that have been made so far and those still to come will finally make Gert’s a long-term success.

“History has shown that we haven’t really run successful operations with Haven, Gerts for nine years, the daycare,” said Drew. “So we really wanted to make sure we had an operation that would run successfully.”

“This is a college bar,” added the restaurant tenant. “So it should be a serious money maker, especially now that it’s downstairs and more accessible.”