I've done several rehearsal room installs and maintenance contracts and found that this almost never works.

I mean, take your Wednesday evening session. Reasonably busy - all rooms booked out from 6pm - 11pm, £9/hour - your rehearsal room makes £270 a night. Happy days.

But then there's this shop business. You're going to want to pay the shop assistant £7/hour - so you're £35 down. Do you take £35 a night? Quite possibly not. Musicians are usually hard up, and if they've any sense will buy strings and picks and drum skins in bulk from the internet. You'll need to sell £100 worth of stuff, every night, to make enough profit just to pay the person selling it. That's £17 per band. I don't see it happening.

The only 2 ways you can sell things really and make any money are:
- Do it on account. Leave an emergency tool kit in every rehearsal room and if somebody busts a guitar string they can take one out of the box, providing they pay off their account afterwards. You can obviously take deposits etc so that they can't get into debt with you.

- Get a vending machine. The old skool sort that sells everything from canned drinks to chocolate bars, with the little spiral wire things that rotate to drop the goods into the bottom. You can get packs of guitar strings in those, envelopes with picks in, patch leads for pedals etc. Obviously filling it with snacks won't do you any harm either. A bottles vending machine for fizzy drinks can also work. I know rehearsal rooms who've put canned beer in them on the sly, people sweating buckets in a rehearsal room will pay good money for a cold can of lager that can be obtained quite cheaply by the slab in the cash & carry.



Staffed shops just don't make the money, unless you are in the studio anyway. But most of the rehearsal rooms I work with are unattended, and have a daytime caretaker.