About Ryan Dahlstrom
Ryan Dahlstrom has spent over twenty years opening, turning around, and running bars and restaurants. That hands-on operator experience is the foundation of everything on this site — the business plan, the startup cost spreadsheet, the critical path checklist, and every piece of guidance in the content library.
If you are planning to open a bar, working through a business plan, trying to understand the real startup costs, or figuring out how to staff a new venue, the work here is built from the same frameworks Ryan has used on actual venue launches.
Twenty years of opening, turning around, and running bars.
Ryan’s career started behind the bar and worked through every role in hospitality operations. By the mid-2000s, he was running multi-unit operations and taking on turnaround projects for struggling venues. He founded Rescue My Bar and traveled the country restructuring operations that had lost their way. The proprietary audit systems and training frameworks now embedded in his published work first took shape during that period.
The practical knowledge that sits underneath opena.bar — what it actually costs to open a bar in specific markets, what the real critical path looks like from concept to opening day, what a defensible business plan needs to cover to survive lender scrutiny — comes from doing the work repeatedly. Not from reading about it.
Multiple operator-grade hospitality publications.
Ryan is the author of multiple operator-grade hospitality publications. The Bar Starts Here, published through 1-Ounce Publishing, has over 65,000 copies distributed worldwide and has become a standard reference in bar management and operations.
The Bar Business Plan available on this site is the planning side of the same body of work. Where The Bar Starts Here covers running a bar that already exists, the Bar Business Plan covers building the plan that gets the bar funded, approved, and opened in the first place. It is not a generic small business plan template with a bar coat of paint. It is a bar-specific plan structured to the questions lenders, investors, and landlords actually ask.
The Ultimate Responsible Alcohol Service Manual — the 140-page bartender training and responsible service manual published at bartendertrainingmanual.com — is the staffing side of the same work. New bar owners who purchase the Bar Business Plan typically need the training manual about 60 days before opening, when they start hiring staff. The two publications are built to work together.
In total, Ryan has authored more than 1,000 pages of hospitality training and operations documentation currently in use across the industry.
A parallel practice that informs the work.
Ryan also serves as an active dram shop and alcohol service liability expert witness, working both plaintiff and defense engagements nationwide. This is a parallel professional practice, operated separately from the planning and training content you are looking at here. If you need expert witness services specifically, visit thedramshopexpert.com or expertwitness.co.
For founders reading this: the expert witness work matters because it is how Ryan stays close to what actually goes wrong when new bars do not launch well. The same operational patterns that produce defensible training programs also produce bars that make it past year three. What Ryan sees in dram shop matters informs what goes into the training manual. What he learns doing bar turnarounds informs what goes into the business plan.
Most ‘how to open a bar’ content online is thin.
opena.bar exists because the existing landscape for aspiring bar owners is thin. Most ‘how to open a bar’ content online is either:
- Generic startup content with a bar example bolted on
- SaaS lead magnets from point-of-sale companies that want your email
- Overpriced consulting packages that do not scale
- Social media personalities selling courses without operational substance
The gap in the middle — practical, operator-grade planning resources authored by someone who has actually opened bars — is where this site lives. The primary product is the Bar Business Plan. The content library gives aspiring founders the framework they need before they buy. The Founder Bundle combines the business plan with the startup cost spreadsheet, critical path checklist, and training manual for founders who want the full operating system.
Ryan is based in Tucson, Arizona, and works with clients across the United States. Most engagements are remote. Custom plan development, investor presentation review, and implementation consulting are available by arrangement.
For questions about the Bar Business Plan, the Founder Bundle, or any of the resources on this site, use the Contact page. For expert witness inquiries, contact expertwitness.co directly — it is a separate professional practice with separate intake.
Ryan is also on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/ryandahlstrom1 and published at ryandahlstrom.expert.
Start with the plan that gets your bar funded.
The Bar Business Plan is the planning side of 20+ years of bar operating experience — structured to the questions lenders, investors, and landlords actually ask.