Paint and Sip Nights for Community Clubs

The hall is the biggest thing the club owns, and it earns the least

Count the hours the hall is actually in use. The AGM, the odd private hire, whatever the sporting side needs on a Saturday, a meeting or two. Then look at the rest of the week. Lights off, doors locked, the best room in the suburb doing absolutely nothing on a Wednesday.

Money is tight and everyone on the committee already knows it. Subs cover part of it. The bar does well when there is something on and almost nothing when there is not. The gap gets closed by the same small group of people putting on the same small handful of things, year after year, because they are the ones who always put their hand up.

Ideas were never the shortage. Someone at every meeting has one. The trouble is where an idea lands. It lands on the eight people who already do the mowing, the ordering, the keys, the insurance paperwork and the roster nobody else wants to touch. An idea that needs six of them free on a Saturday is not really an idea. It is somebody's weekend, spent.

Paint Juicy runs paint and sip nights inside other people's venues across Queensland, New South Wales and the Northern Territory. We are looking for rooms on nights they would otherwise be empty. Your hall is one of those rooms, and the arrangement is built so that nobody at your club has to take anything on.

What the arrangement is, in plain terms

There is no venue fee, no commission and no hire charge. The club pays nothing and the club is not invoiced for anything afterwards. That holds whether the night sells out or sells softly.

The reason it works is simple enough to say in one line. We are paid by the people who buy a seat, not by the club. Because the guests pay us, we do not need to charge you, and because we do not charge you, there is nothing for a treasurer to approve.

You supply two things. The room, and the bar. Guests buy their drinks at your bar, at your prices, and that money is yours. That is the whole return, and it is the entire point of the arrangement for you.

Revenue that costs your volunteers nothing

This is the part that decides whether the idea is any good to a club like yours.

Almost every way of making money out of a hall costs volunteer hours. Somebody prints the flyers. Somebody chases the permit. Somebody buys the supplies, stores the supplies, sets up the trestles, mans the door, runs the eftpos, sweeps up at eleven and takes the bins out on the Sunday. The income is real, but so is the cost, and the cost is paid in the one currency a small club cannot print more of.

This is deliberately not that. The work is not shared between us, and it is not reduced for you. It sits entirely on our side.

Nobody goes on a roster

There is no roster because there is nothing to roster. We do not need helpers, greeters, a door person or a spare pair of hands. Our host artist and our team run the night, front to back. If every committee member decides to stay home and watch the footy, the night still happens exactly the same way.

Whoever normally pours, pours

Plenty of community clubs run the bar on volunteers. That does not change anything here. If your Friday bar is two people who have done it for fifteen years, it is the same two people, doing the same job, serving drinks the way they always have. Nothing new to learn, no special menu, no cocktails they have never heard of. They pour, they take the money, they close up.

The only real difference is that there are people in front of them on a night there usually would not be.

Setup and pack down are ours, all of it

We arrive with everything. Easels, canvases, paints, brushes, aprons, the PA, the lot. We set the room out and we put it back. If your tables live in a cupboard behind the stage, show us the cupboard once and we will take them out and return them. We take everything with us, so the club stores nothing between sessions. The hall is left exactly the way we walked into it.

Nobody has to sell a ticket

Ticket sales, the advertising, the promotion and all the customer questions are ours. Nobody at the club has to post about it, sell to their neighbours, work out a booking system or answer a phone call from someone asking what to wear. Your secretary's inbox stays exactly as busy as it was.

One decision, then it is finished

A committee makes a decision once, usually in about ten minutes, and after that it is off the agenda. There is no project to manage, no working group and no monthly report on how it is tracking. You give us a night and access to the room. We come, we run it, we leave. If it went well, we come back. Nobody has taken on a new job.

Who supplies what

That is the full list on both sides. There is no third column of things to sort out later.

Who turns up, and why they suit a club hall

Our guests are women, aged anywhere from 30 to 90, with the biggest group sitting between 35 and 65. They come in twos and fours and sixes, they are usually local, and they are the sort of crowd a community club is already comfortable with. Nobody is climbing on furniture. They are there for a good night out, a singalong and a canvas to take home.

They also drink the way that suits a club bar rather than a cocktail list. Wine, a spritz, a beer, a soft drink for whoever is driving, and another round when the first layer is drying. Because the painting happens in stages, there are natural moments where people are up and moving, and the bar is where they go.

For a hall that mostly sees the same faces, a room full of people who have never been through your door is a genuinely different evening. Not a takeover, not a hire, just a busy night in a room that is usually dark.

"Who does the work? We have eight volunteers and they are all tired."

Fair question, and the honest answer is that the work is ours, not yours, and we have said that in a way you can hold us to.

Here is the whole of what your club does. Someone agrees a date. Someone opens the door and shows us where the tables are. Your bar operates as it normally would that evening. Someone locks up at the end. If your bar is volunteer staffed, that is the same shift they would work on any night the club is open, and if the club would not normally be open, then that shift is the one thing you are adding.

What your eight people do not do, in any part of this. They do not set up. They do not pack down. They do not sell tickets, take bookings, handle refunds, promote anything, buy anything, store anything, wash brushes, chase up numbers or field questions from guests. None of that touches them, because none of it is theirs.

If it goes badly, it costs you a night of bar trade you would not have had anyway. There is no invoice and no obligation to run another one. That is deliberate. A club with eight tired people should not be asked to gamble any of them on somebody else's idea, and we would rather earn the second night than lock you into it.

Questions committees ask us

Have a look, then have a chat

If you want to see what one of these nights actually looks like before you raise it at a meeting, browse the upcoming paint and sip events across Queensland and open a few. Each one is running in somebody else's room on an evening that room was free.

For the full walk through of how a partnership runs from the first email to the pack down, read how hosting a paint and sip at your venue works. If your club sits alongside a different sort of venue, there is a page for paint and sip nights at RSL clubs and one for bowls clubs with a quiet clubhouse, or start at the list of venue types we partner with.

Trent & James