NJ Private Cigar Club moving forward
This is my first post here. I found the site while surfing. I am a member of the board of the Metropolitan Cigar Society out of NJ. We are a large club with over 100 paid members and have been in existance going into our 12th year.
Well last week we had our February meeting of the Metropolitan Cigar Society (http://www.metrocigar.com). There were 76 in attendance.
We presented a business plan to protect the integrity of the Metropolitan Cigar Society from being fractured and its general membership from being “left out in the cold” because of the non-smoking legislation enacted by the state legislature.
I will not go into all the details but basically there will be three levels of membership. Two would include owning a share of the stock in the corporation with a $500.00/share for common stock and $1,000.00/share for preferred. There would also be a $150.00/year general membership for those who do not want to buy stock.
The club will be staffed and run by the members and will be open at least 5 nights per week. We will also continue to have our general meeting on the first Wednesday of the month. The general meeting will be catered by an outside company.
We have located a 3000 sq/ft commercial space that is landlord friendly and is in the Fairfield, NJ area, centrally located to our membership and has parking for over 100 cars.
The space has an office area which we will turn into a lounge. The area will have comfortable furniture, plasma tv, ice machine, coffee, soda vending, snacks, internet hookup and more. A during the week a limited food menu is being considered.
Another large area will be used for our monthly meetings and other events with dining tables and chairs. There will be lockers that members can rent to store cigars, wine or booze, etc. We will install a quality ventilation system. There will also be a pool table and a few poker tables.
Access to the club will be controlled by a card access system.
After our presentation we obtained monitary commitments of over $50,000.00 from the members; far exceeding our expectations. We expect to pick up at least another 7,000.00 to 10,000.00 from the members that were not there.
In addition to that, many members offered either services or equipment for the club. We had a rep from a major cigar company there who is donating a large cigar store indian, wall hangings, ashtrays, etc for the club.
This is going to be an upscale private club, not some rinkyding joint. Anyone interested can contact me at rll@priveye.com, (973) 227 1415 or through the cigar club web address above.
