Can You Bijou?

Boston is blessed with many things, spaces designed to be clubs is not one of them. Bijou is different. Every inch of the space is designed with an eye toward the nightlife future that is in store for it. There are custom built led light arrays that are artistically designed and stunning, such things are the first things you notice when looking over pictures like these: 

But look closer and you will find the little touches that can only be created when you fuse together the two most important, costly, and rare elements of a nightlife venue. The first is the experience and knowledge gained from years of competing, err dominating, in the nightlife industry. The second is the ability (read: combination of funding and patience) to create a custom design and see it through the painstaking and lengthy finished product. Want an example? Take a look at the banquet seating design, there is the traditional seat and back, but with an upper flat area. Sleek and modern looking but designed with a specific purpose in mind I would guess. This is a club, and in clubs people like to be seen, one of the best ways to do so is to get up on furniture and dance. I will venture to guess there will be two tiers of beautiful women dancing on those banquets as soon as the vinyl disciples get a chance to take control of Bijou’s sound system. It would have been cheaper and faster to buy pre-designed seating, but in the end it would not be as good. that detail is one of a thousand that have been contemplated and built into this place from day one, this space was designed to be a club from the core. That is the gauntlet that Bjiou is throwing down in Boston. This will be the best nightclub in Boston, and it won’t be close.

That is an example of creating a market. How? Just go to any other club in Boston, and look around. No not at the well endowed bartenders, or the girls dancing on the stage, but at the physical club. Most are in some state of decay, most are retrofitted for the third time, and with each new coat of paint they are reborn. With awkwardly inserted DJ booths, that are sometimes not even in sight, or Air Conditioning units and duct work jammed in and painted to kind of disappear. That is not Bijou’s market. Their market is meticulous design, with the mechanical bullshit behind the scenes. Their market is sumptuously designed rooms created to host guests during many hours of the day and to allow them everything from an after dinner drink and bite to eat; to a raging night of dancing on the furniture until our city decides they must go home. Its a new market, and you are going to like what it is selling. 

Live in Boston? Go out much? Well Bijou is going to do something that you can’t find anywhere else. Bijou is going to be the first top club venue to serve food all night. Yes the kitchen will be open as long as the bars are. Better yet the menu is smartly designed to require no utensils so that it can be enjoyed with minimal formality and maximum portability. This isn’t a thrown together menu of bar food classics, it is a re-invented international mix that ranges from sliders that include pulled pork, new england fried clams, and chickpea with tahini mayo, to cumin grilled lamb chops with yogurt and mint. 

So why is this a new market? Because it is an evolution of the nightlife scene in Boston that is sorely overdue. It is a higher level of service, a more complete offering, and a first for the city we live in. There is a reason so many of us have ended up at the intestinal challenging Chau Chow City, the heartburn capitol of Boston Cafe Pompeii, or stood in line trying to talk our way into the South Street Diner. The reason is wherever we were had no food.

Bijou will be its own market because it does things that no other place will do. The next step means a new first class, and for those that want to experience what first class in Boston means there will be only one choice. Bijou.

Are you capable of doing what hasn’t been done before? Take a moment and look at what you do, who else is doing it and think of what you could do to create a new market. To do so you will have to offer things that have not been offered. Bijou did it by assembling Boston’s best cast of nightlife professionals, (George Aboujaoude, Mete Aslan, Kevin Fitzpatrick) and covering all the bases from the business maneuvering, to the musical genius of the Vinyl Disciples, to the on scene creative energy and presence they bring. This group went on to assemble an experienced operational management team led by Demetri Tsolakis, which promises that Bijou will not taint you with the in-experience of a rookie if you visit at its opening, rather it will leave you with the feeling you just saw how things should and can be done. 

To do that for your business you have to think free of the boundaries that surround what is ‘normally’ done, and strive to deliver something to your guests that they truly can only get there. Its a steep challenge, but one you will have to rise to, if you are going to Bijou.