Normally, opening one bar is a big enough challenge for someone.
Not Andrew Bayard.
Even the success from his recently opened bar, Huey’s, hasn’t stopped him from continuing the business plan he and his partners started developing over a year ago.
Bayard’s next concept is called The Draft House — a draft-beer establishment that will also serve food.
“…We actually had the idea for [The Draft House] first,” Bayard said. “We had the letter of intent for the space in [August 2012], so we know we were going to do something.”
The Draft House will also serve food for lunch and dinner, something the Huey’s space doesn’t allow.
“There isn’t really a place down here that serves lunch,” Bayard said. “Stroubes and IPO do a good job, but are pretty expensive, so we feel like we’re filling a void.”
Bayard said the hope is that since the bars offer two completely different experiences, they will be able to feed off each other.
“When people are sitting at the bar [at Huey’s] talking about how they want food, the bartenders know where to send them,” Bayard said.
Bayard opened Huey’s Bar downtown July 12 to a crowd of people— something that was commonplace throughout the week.
“We exceeded any expectations we had during the first week,” Bayard said. “It’s been amazing.”
Bayard said the concept behind Huey’s targets the young professional demographic with high-end cocktails and live music.
John Delgado — Bayard’s business partner at Huey’s — said they were shooting for something that his wife would feel comfortable going to get drink.
“What we felt downtown needed was a place that was non-smoking, a place that catered to the happy-hour crowd and a place that felt clean with nice bathrooms,” Delgado said. “A place my wife would walk into without wanting to run out the door.”
Delgado — who sits on the Baton Rouge City Council for District 12 — cited the massive construction projects set to happen within the next two years as a major motivation for opening bars downtown.
“Within the next two years we expect 300-400 new apartment units to be opened,” Delgado said. “Those apartments will be filled with the exact people we were targeting when we opened Huey’s.”
The dual-bar concept was hatched during Bayard’s time working for Last In Concepts, owned by Jack Warner and Brandon Landry.
Bayard said during his time as a manger at Happy’s and Roux House, two of Last In Concepts’ bars downtown, he watched several people walk between the two bars looking for a different experience.
“Roux House is a live-band bar that has bottled beer and focuses on vodka and tequila drinks, while Happy’s is a speciality beer bar that focuses on scotch and whiskey,” Bayard said. “Every night people would walk between the two looking for different experiences, and that was something we wanted to replicate.”
The time at Last In Concepts also helped Bayard learn how to successfully run not only a bar, but a business.
Bayard said he picked up a lot of information while working for the company, something that attracted him to the job in the first place.
“A lot of what I brought into these places, I learned from [Warner and Landry],” Bayard said. “Part of the reason I went to work for them originally was to learn to do something on my own … they brought in a lot of good teachers to teach us how to run the business.”
By opening two bars on the same street as his former employers, Bayard now provides direct competition to what has become a monopoly in Baton Rouge, but he isn’t worried about his prior relationships.
“I think we are on as good of terms as you can be  — when they opened Walk-On’s, they were leaving Chimes and Mike Anderson’s, so they know the deal,” Bayard said. “One of the last meetings I was in, Jack even made the comment, ‘We’d love it if one of our managers became a business owner.’ Well I guess I made him a happy son-of-a-bitch then.”